Artist of the day: Artist of the day, September 13: Subodh Gupta, Indian sculptor, Installation

Wednesday, September 13, 2017

Artist of the day, September 13: Subodh Gupta, Indian sculptor, Installation

Subodh Gupta (1964) was raised in the Bihar railway town of Khagaul in India. He studied art at school, although they had no teacher. Instead, the children would meet to talk, read books, and make art, learning from each other. In 1988, Gupta earned a BFA in painting from the College of Arts and Crafts, Patna University in Bihar. Since 1990, he has lived and worked in New Dehli, India.

His work is about where he come from. But at the same time, the expansion of the art world means that, to a certain extent, everything is shrinking together, and he have to be aware of international discourse in his work. The objects he work with "refer to the current state of India's shifting society, migration, a sense of home and place, and the effects and frictions caused by a rapidly globalizing society." The transition in his work "from organic . . . to manufactured . . . has traced his own migration to the mainstream of art culture of urban India." Art language is the same all over the world, which allows him to be anywhere.

Like eighty percent of the population in India, he grew up carrying his lunch in the kinds of tiffin pots featured in his work."I am the idol thief. I steal from the drama of Hindu life. And from the kitchen.-these pots, they are like stolen gods, smuggled out of the country. Steel. . . first started seeping into Indian households where I was boy of about eleven or twelve . . . It was the new metal that . . . new Temples of Modernity were churning out . . . Insidiously, it was entering our hearth and home." Hindu kitchens are as important as prayer rooms. These pots are like something sacred, part of important rituals, buying them in a market.

Buckets are also very resonant to him. Where he grew up, big families lived together, and taking the bucket meant that you were going to bathe. It's all creating a juxtaposition between the personal and something bigger. These days…sushi restaurants are opening up all over India, indicating how…the history of the Silk Route, a route of trade across India and Asia, goes back centuries. The objects he pick already have their own significance. I put them together to create new meanings.

All images are Copyright © 2007, Subodh Gupta