She is the first artist from the Asian subcontinent - a region with a booming art scene - to be chosen to be profiled in the Contemporary Artists Series. Gupta’s work is in the attention of curators such as David Elliott, Massimiliano Gioni, Geraldo Mosquera, and Hans Ulrich Obrist. The synaesthetic nature of her practice is also an inspiration of her home city - born, and brought up in Mumbai through the globalising ’90s, she comes from a Marwari family that has little to do with the arts, but the city has had its impact. Ever since she started out after graduating from Mumbai’s JJ School of Art, her work is an ongoing exploration of how human actions and interactions are subjected to a range of external and internal stimuli, from socio-political constructs to personal relationships and technology. Gupta is a curator-favourite in many European and American galleries for her socially-engaged, multi-faceted practice. Her art demands a lot from the viewer, intellectually and physically, and she is among a few artists from her generation who have broken away from all norms of formal training. Among contemporary Indian artists in her age group, Gupta is the only one whose works have been shown far more in Europe than in India - part of a few private collections in India such as the Anupam Poddar collection and art consultant and collector Amrita Jhaveri’s private collection. Gupta, 49, has been representing India in contemporary art platforms across the world as an artist who uses different kinds of media - written word, technology, natural objects, constructed objects as well as classical art materials to create expansive, multi-layered, 3D installations that invite her viewers to engage and interact with her works. Together, their works represent a tension between two generations and, more importantly, it becomes a conversation about visibility and invisibility, the image and the word, the political and the philosophical.
Gupta’s art has been about inventive use of technology and physical, day-to-day materials to represent complex thought processes about alienation, discrimination, silencing and invisibility of marginalised communities and classes across South Asia.
Merz is a deceased artist who was once part of Italy’s Anti-Povera art movement, which was a sort of artistic defiance by replacing conventional art-making tools and materials with avant-garde display of everyday or “poor” objects and materials. The two-artist, dialogue-driven show "Shilpa Gupta & Marisa Merz: VisibleInvisible" at Maxxi Laquita, Italy, is one of those shows that go far beyond the East-West intersection which it also primarily is.
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