New York
Shilpa Gupta’s recent exhibition of minimal, poetic interventions took on time, space, means of communication, and memory in ways that linger in the heart and mind. Sound is important within her practice, and it played a key role here, fraught with historical references. Song of the Ground (2017) resembled a wall clock, but with two pendulums instead of one. “Borderland stones,” collected by the artist where the Teesta River flows in the contested territory between India and Pakistan, served as weights at the end of the pivots, held apart and then mechanically smacked together to produce a loud cracking sound. The Stone Age is tragicomically evoked, as is the bringing forth of fire by banging together flint stones and the creation of tools, including those used to injure and kill. The violent clap of the heavy hands at the end of the thin arms not only marked time and its passage, but also registered friction and accompanying wear and tear.
A distinctive flapping could be heard nearby, coming from a large space in which two mechanical flap displays hung at a slight angle to each other. Their rather agreeable sound used to be immediately recognizable to every airport and train station visitor, stirring up a range of feelings tied to departures and arrivals, and to expectations either met or unfulfilled. StillTheyKnowNotWhatIDream (2021)—with the title words strung together like an email or website address—did not dispense travel information. Instead, statements came and went across the two boards in a call and response written in Roman capitals, their tenor echoing the conceptual art practices of Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger: “AND GAZE AT DISTANCES / AND GAZE AT LINES; IT LIES / TO STAY IN POWER” or “WITH POWER / COMES FEAR.” The analog machine age we thought we knew is making way for the era of artificial intelligence, an unknown destination undoubtedly rife with social and political turmoil.
The message of A Liquid, The Mouth Froze (2018), a gun-metal cast of the space within an open mouth, was equally foreboding. To the left of this void made solid hung a thin etched brass plate resembling a ruler, oriented vertically and bearing a statement (turned 90 degrees) describing the brutal act of invasion and silencing represented by the cast. Gupta has every reason to be concerned by the rise of authoritarianism and the threat to freedom of speech. Ten wall-hung works from the same year, each titled Untitled (Jailed poets drawing), presented a series of faint images on white paper held behind unevenly spaced wooden bars.
Untitled (Tower of Broken Pencil Points) (2021), a grim take on Brancusi’s Endless Column and the Tower of Babel, raised the subject of censorship once again. According to the Biblical account, when the tower threatened to rise to heaven, God confounded the speech of human beings; no longer able to understand each other, people could no longer cooperate, which brought construction to a halt. Divide and conquer. Gupta sees such disruption in her native India, where she lives and works, and it is no different in the increasingly disunited United States.
Lights burned in the room-size, multichannel sound installation Listening Air (2019–23), but the wattage was low, the exhibition space almost completely dark. Light bulbs seemingly counterbalanced by microphones slowly rotated through the space and around or beyond the viewer, who could sit on one of several stools positioned near music stands holding printed texts. A song issued from one or more microphones (functioning as speakers) depending on the number of vocalists, each microphone featuring one voice without musical accompaniment. The disorienting effect of a voice singing out from one point and then falling still was heightened by having some of the lights and microphones move in tandem and others not: some light bulbs rising and falling, and others moving along varying elliptical paths. The songs—of protest or of hope and perseverance—came from around the world, transcending time and borders. One was sung by women rice weeders of the Po Valley in the 1940s and echoed in translation by farmers during a sit-down protest in New Delhi in 2020. Another journeyed from the tobacco fields of North Carolina to the streets of American cities during the civil rights movement, and then to human rights protests in North Korea, Beirut, and Beijing: “We Shall Overcome.” The rotation of the elements in dark space evoked the music of the spheres, reminding us of the cosmic order that will prevail, regardless of the ongoing troubles within our realm.
