SUBODH GUPTA
How insignificant Objects Can Become Art
Everything that the artist Subodh Gupta creates comes out from India, his natal country, and then opens out internationally to the rest of the world. He became known for using everyday objects, and cheap daily utensils from Indian households, and magically transforming them into stunning, inventive and impressive works. The luncheon boxes used by millions of Indian workers and schoolchildren, pots and pans, milk pails and bicycles (the common Indian mode of transportation), are his instruments. With these ordinary items he makes his sculpture.
Gupta has fascinated the whole world by elevating the readymade into monumental installations. He is quoted quibbling: ”I steal from the drama of Hindu life. I see my cosmos within my plate. I am certain that if I hadn’t become an artist, I would have been a chef.” He leads the viewer to reflect on how insignificant objects can become art.
Gupta has exhibited all over the planet in museums and prestigious galleries. He has been called “one of the most exciting and celebrated artists in the world today”; “India’s hottest new artist”, wrote the London Times, and “the godfather of contemporary art in India”. The British Guardian called him “the Damian Hurst of Delhi”.
The artist was born in 1964 in Bihar, a state in East India, with important Buddhist pilgrimage sites. His father, a railway guard, died in 1976 when Gupta was only 11, and at 12, his mother sent him to live with her brother in a remote village. He would later say about his life there: “not a single school kid wore shoes, and there is no road to go to school.”
After leaving school, he joined a small theatre group and for five years worked as an actor, where, by designing posters to advertise the plays, he discovered his love for art and decided to go to art school. He explains: ”In visual art you don’t need an audience; you don’t use light, and I’m my own director and I am my own audience. That struck me and I decided to leave the theatre and do visual art”.
In 1993, still a struggling painter, he moved to Delhi, where he met and married a British-born Indian artist. Doing sculpture was “a turning point in my life”. He says: “How I grew up, what I learnt is a great influence on my art”. His memory goes back to Bihar with his uncle and to happy hours in the kitchen with his mother and sisters.
“When I have to do something, I always go back to my roots,” he explains. As he grew up with stools to sit on, he collected them and made an installation, ’29 mornings’, which first attracted attention to this young artist. He also worked with cow dung, believing that sacred cow dung is an antiseptic. One such work is a self-portrait on a bed of cow dung.
“One afternoon, when I went into the kitchen,” he reflects, “instead of cooking, I started looking at the pans. Basically, they started talking to me. In every home, it’s such a common object and I thought ’it’s perfect’, I can draw something from it. It has become my tool”. These tools became his signature; he found his voice in them. “Like for drawing, you use pencils, I use utensils.“He collects these everyday objects from his family and neighbours.
After the stainless steel pots and pans, he discovered the old battered frying pans, mostly found in junkyards. He says that he tries to imagine the people who used them before throwing them away, and how nobody cares for them any more. Were these people happy; how many used them? Each pan tells a story. He calls this new collection ‘7 Billion Light Years’.
From ubiquitous objects, Gupta made an immense sculpture of a fourmetre skull, calling it ‘A Very Hungry God’, which he finished in 2006. It is symbolic of the abundance of pots and the hungry overpopulated India.
‘Two Cows’ are two bicycles painted in shiny gold and carrying milk churns,
“When I was in school, stainless steel was so desirable; to eat from it at an uncle’s house was the height of luxury.”
and airport trolleys carrying luggage, this time made in brass colour, which he calls ‘Vehicle for Seven Seas’.
‘Faith Matters’ is a sushi conveyer belt moving lunch boxes, symbolising immigrating people in an airport. There is also a fountain filled with mangoes painted in bronze, which he calls ‘Wash before eating’ and also a loaf of uncooked bread also made in bronze.
‘People Tree’, also called ‘Dada’ (2014), is a formidable monumental 10-metre sculpture of a banyan tree, constructed mostly from polished reflective kitchen utensils. “Dada is a Hindi word; we always call grandfather Dada”, as he is the protector of the family, he explains. After seeing this amazing tree, we start observing trees differently.
The kitchenware that Gupta uses is the pride of middle class Indian families that his family could not afford. “When I was in school, stainless steel was so desirable; to eat from it at an uncle’s house was the height of luxury.”
Repetition of the objects and the immensity of scale is part of Gupta’s style, which he uses very effectively. He presents the ambivalence of the Indian society caught between globalisation and tradition. “I steal from the drama of Hindu life, and from the kitchen – these pots, they are like stolen gods, smuggled out of the country. Hindu kitchens are as important as prayer rooms.”