by Ellis Cochrane

If the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic highlighted and heightened anything it was the feelings of confinement and isolation that many of us experienced. These notions are mirrored but with a sense of hope in one of the latest exhibitions commissioned by the Barbican, London; Shilpa Gupta’s Sun At Night at The Curve.

Mumbai-based artist Shilpa Gupta, who was born in 1976 and studied sculpture at the Sir J.J. School of Fine Arts, Mumbai from 1992 to 1997, has had her work exhibited in galleries in cities around the world including Antwerp, Oslo, Cincinnati, Linz, Baku, Bristol and New Delhi. This exhibition at the Barbican will be the first major London solo exhibition for the artist.

As 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 and video to photography and sound. Used poetically, they explore physical and ideological boundaries and how, as individuals, we come to feel a sense of isolation or belonging.

For the Barbican’s 34th commission for The Curve, Gupta presents and builds upon her acclaimed immersive multi-channel installation project For, In Your Tongue, I Cannot Fit (2017–18). Comprising 100 microphones suspended above 100 metal spikes, each pierces a page inscribed with a fragmented verse of poetry by a poet incarcerated for their work, writings, or beliefs. Each one hangs at different heights, perhaps to indicate, “the level of the mouths of different people, tall and short, from all over the world, whose imprisonment is reflected in the sounds we hear,” as Ben Luke of The Evening Standard comments.

The poetry spans from the 8th to the 21st centuries and includes works by poets such as 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 99 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.

In addition to reconfiguring For, In Your Tongue, I Cannot Fit for its London premiere in the dramatic arc of The Curve, Gupta presents a new body of work expanding on the research and themes present in the installation. This includes the artist’s first pair of motion flapboards, which further extend Gupta’s use of sound, language and the power of speech within her practice. Used historically as departure boards within airports or train stations, Gupta’s boards enter an uneasy poetic dialogue with one another, interrogating dynamics of control and circumventions.

Of the exhibition, Shilpa Gupta says: 
“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 risks and persist through the being of our societies.”

Jane Alison, Head of Visual Arts, Barbican, comments: 
“I am thrilled that Shilpa Gupta will be staging our latest Curve commission at the Barbican. This will be the first time that there has been a significant showing of her work in London. Gupta is an extraordinary artist working with a hugely experimental and interdisciplinary practice that explores themes of identity, nation borders and notions of power combined with a poetic sensibility. For, In Your Tongue, I Cannot Fit was shown to great acclaim at the Venice Biennale in 2019 and it always seemed to me that this powerful work would be stunning in the Curve and that it was important for a London audience to be able to experience it.”

The show has already received four-star reviews from both The Guardian and The Evening Standard.

Jonathan Jones of The Guardian exclaims:
“Gupta reminds you how shockingly recent this all is—Soviet camps were not something that just existed in Stalin’s time: poets were going to prison for their words in Communist Europe in the 1980s. Gupta takes up these isolated poems of the confined and the brutalised, and lends them a chorus of solidarity.”

The exhibition at the Barbican coincides with an exhibition of new work and Shilpa Gupta’s first solo show at Frith Street Gallery Golden Square in London, taking place from 26 November 2021 to 22 January 2022.

For those unable to attend in London, Gupta also has solo presentations in Germany at Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (15 September 2021–21 January 2022) and in Dallas, Texas at Dallas Contemporary (26 September 2021–13 February 2022).

Shilpa Gupta: Sun at Night is on show until 6 February at The Curve, Barbican Centre.

@barbicancentre