CONVERSATION STARTER
A retrospective in Antwerp shows why Shilpa Gupta is the darling of the Indian art world
Until September 12, Antwerp’s prestigious Museum of Contemporary Art (M HKA) has given up 20,000 sq ft to Shilpa Gupta for her retrospective, Today Will End. The Mumbaibased artist has always enjoyed a high profile in Europe but the scale of this show, featuring 25 of her works, is staggering. The show, she says, “led me to step back and look at my practice… how mobility, agency and power between individuals and surrounding structures have been a recurring concern in my art.”
In the nerd-friendly, conceptual multiverse of Subodh Gupta, Bharti Kher, Jitish Kallat, Reena Saini Kallat and Sudarshan Shetty, the 45-year-old Gupta stands out for constantly pushing the boundaries of art and creativity. Her work straddles sound installation, video projection, site-specific sculpture, instructional art and other forms of experiments. All of which is not entirely virgin territory, but the way she forges an alternative thought paradox and shakes you out of your comfort zone is what makes her something of a critical darling within the Indian art world.
On display at the M HKA is the highly popular Speaking Wall (2009-2010). A conceptual piece that best captures Gupta’s commitment to bringing art closer to the viewer, it can be seen as an example of interactive or instructional art. Gupta motivates you to stand on a narrow line of brick steps and face a wall while an LCD screen lobs instructions. So playful is the concept that you almost miss its veiled critique of man-made borders and their impermanence. The idea grew out of something that Pakistani filmmaker Farzad Nabi said to her during a Wagah-Lahore road trip. “Farzad and I chatted about many things...and something that stayed with me, rather unconsciously, was when we spoke of his grandmother who still had the key to her house in Kashmir.” Gupta believes in art’s power to generate conversation, no matter how uncomfortable. Nothing seems to thrill her more than the infectious energy of an interactive audience. “My kind of art comes from a space where a variety of people complete the story.” Given that Today Will End is one of her career’s biggest shows, Gupta isn’t happy about missing it due to travel curbs. “It would have been wonderful to talk to people and get a sense of what they feel. A good conversation is always multifold.” ■
SHILPA GUPTA’S retrospective, TodayWill titled features End, major 25 of her works
—Shaikh Ayaz
Payal Kapadia’s A Night of Knowing Nothing, is one of three South Asian features selected at the ongoing Cannes Film Festival, along with Abdullah Mohammad Saad’s Rehana Maryam Noor (Bangladesh, in the Un Certain Regard section) and Rahul Jain’s Invisible Demons (in Cinema for the Climate), the last two being in official selection. Kapadia’s film is in the Directors’ Fortnight, an important parallel section. This is her second outing at Cannes, after her short Afternoon Clouds, made as an
Film and Television Institute of India student, was shown in the festival’s Cinéfondation section in 2017. Another short, And What is the Summer Saying, premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in 2018.
A Night of... primarily uses the format of letters—written by a young Indian college student, known simply as ‘L’, to her estranged boyfriend about the radical changes happening around her. It is an experimental feature merging reality with fiction, home videos and nightmares. Shot mainly in black and white, the film has been spliced with ‘found sound’ and ‘found images.’
“A lot of the footage was shot by my partner Ranabir Das and me over years. More footage was also very generously given to us by filmmaker friends. We edited it ourselves during the lockdown in our bedroom. It gives me a sense of hope, that a film made with limited means and support from well-wishers can be shown at Cannes. Also, it is exciting to be in the Directors’ Fortnight,” says Kapadia, over email from Bordeaux in France, where she was finishing the film, an Indo-French co-production
Filmmaker Rahul Jain, who arrived on the scene in 2016 with the terrific documentary Machines, takes a while to find his words. Even if it means long pauses (running into a full minute at times) during a conversation, Jain would rather find the ‘right’ word than approximate his thoughts. His latest documentary, Invisible Demons, on Delhi’s rapidly deteriorating pollution problem, will premiere in the ‘Cinema for the Climate’ section at the 74th edition of the Cannes Film festival. It is cause for celebration, but the 30-year-old sounds composed. “Everyone is projecting on me. Apparently, it’s a big deal. To be honest,
I find most festivals selfcongratulatory. I’m looking forward to doing what I do best—jumping in front of a moving train,” he says with a laugh.
Growing up in the West Delhi neighbourhood of Pitampura, Jain remembers the bus rides to his South Delhi school, when he would notice the foam coming out of the ‘sewers’. “Then someone told me it was a river,” he says. It wasn’t like he was an ecologically militant person while growing up, but there seemed to be this gnawing feeling. “And then when I went to California and experienced the life and culture of someone who was raised to appreciate all this, it sparked this primordial love for the natural world,” says Jain. There was, however, one more ‘spark’ for Invisible Demons—when Jain fell gravely ill after landing in Delhi from a month of backpacking in Bhutan in 2017. “I have all kinds of air purifiers and water purifiers and I’m getting sick. What’s happening to those who don’t have all this?”, he thought.
Jain remembers interviewing some men on the Yamuna ghats. When he asked them what the foam was, “They said poore Dilli ka shampoo hai”, says Jain, unable to control his laughter. There was another moment he wished he had recorded. “I was talking to this cow herder on top of a landfill, whose cows were gorging on delicious plastic. I asked him whom he sells the milk to, and he said, ‘We sell this to five-star hotels’.”
Jain is not a fan of films that are lessons, replete with numbers and science. He believes it is the job of a filmmaker to make his audience feel. Referring to the recent heat-wave in Canada, he says, “Just the thought of someone dying because of heat...makes me hold my breath. Does it matter if it’s 40 or 50 degrees?” He sums up the world’s apathy in a stark picture: “I think humans are playing beach volleyball of identity politics, about who is who, while the water rises.” ■