Opening autumn 2021, Barbican Art Gallery will present the first major London solo exhibition by Mumbai-based artist Shilpa Gupta. One of South Asia’s most critically acclaimed artists working today, Gupta’s multidisciplinary practice encompasses a wide range of media and processes, from text, sculpture, video, photography, and sound which poetically explores physical and ideological boundaries and how, as individuals, we come to feel a sense of isolation or belonging. Shilpa Gupta’s new commission opens in The Curve on Thursday 7 October 2021.
For the Barbican’s 34th commission for The Curve, Gupta will present and build on her acclaimed project For, In Your Tongue, I Cannot Fit (2017–18) – an immersive multi-channel installation that comprises 100 microphones suspended above 100 metal spikes, each piercing a page inscribed with a fragmented verse of poetry by a poet incarcerated for their work, writings, or beliefs.
Including poetry from the 8th to the 21st centuries such as by Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Samuel Bamford, Irina Ratushinskaya, and the 14th century Azerbaijani poet Nesimi – whose writing inspired the title of the installation – the soundscape alternates between languages including Arabic, Azeri, Chinese, English, Hindi and Spanish where each microphone utters verses of poetry echoed by a chorus of its ninety-nine counterparts as if standing together in solidarity. Through each poem, Gupta draws attention to the wider stories and experiences of global histories, and by giving a voice to those who had been silenced, Gupta’s haunting installation highlights the fragility and vulnerability of one’s right to personal expression whilst raising urgent questions of free expression, censorship, confinement, and resistance.
Shilpa Gupta said: “When I first walked into the cavernous space of The Curve, it reminded me of a snaking back alley and perhaps even a spine of a curled-up creature. The curator’s proposition to show the sound installation, For, In Your Tongue I Cannot Fit, made sense - to infuse The Curve – with voices and sounds that hover, take risk and persist through the being of our societies.”
