Get A Shilpa Gupta Art Work (Well, A Piece Of It) For Free

A detail from "Someone Else", 2011.

If you make your way to Shilpa Gupta’s solo exhibition “Someone Else” at Chemould Prescott Road Gallery, you can indeed nab a piece of one of the art works on display (we’ve already sent ours for framing). Each soap brick in “Threat”, imprinted with the word “Threat”, is free to be picked up by visitors, though let that not be your sole incentive for seeing this illuminating show by an artist that has long fiddled with the barriers of conventional expression. Given the recent commotion surrounding The Satanic Verses and Salman Rushdie, the work “Someone Else” makes a timely comment on the menace of censorship. Stainless steel reproductions of dozens of book covers—by Jane Austen, J. K. Rowling and George Eliot among them—have been propped on a bookshelf, mere empty casings of the originals.

Take a closer look, and you’ll see Gupta’s intervention, an imprinted notation that tells you the reason why each author had to hide his or her original name under a pseudonym or gender-neutral identity. Some to “avoid a reputation being damaged”, others “for fear of not being able to return home” or “fear of being labeled the ‘mad’ protagonist of her book”. Though a few date back to a 100 years, some like Rowling’s admission that she used her initials rather that her full name so as to conceal her gender, lead to the unsettling conclusion that we’ve made scant progress in our rights of expression. If that doesn’t rattle you, then let the slithering sound emitting from 4,000 suspended microphones wash over you when you stand before “Singing Cloud”. Together they whisper, “I want to fly away high above in the sky”, making you disarmingly aware that though you may not always control the medium of expression (you can’t actually speak into these microphones; rather they emit sound), you are always subject to it.

Chemould Prescott Road Gallery

LocationQueens Mansion
Third Floor
G. T. Marg
Near Cathedral Middle School
Fort

Phone2200 0211/2

Relevant DatesUntil Thursday, February 16

HoursMonday to Saturday, 11am to 7pm; Sunday closed

Ticketing & Price InfoFree

Websitewww.gallerychemould.com