Getting upclose with a promising artist on the video art and new media scene

Shilpa Gupta, born in Mumbai in 1976, began her artistic career at a very young age, using a wide range of media with which she engages with the political and cultural world around her.

Her artistic practice to date has taken many forms: video, photography and (often interactive) installations. Technology is an almost essential element in Gupta’s work. The artist uses it as a narrative device but it is also the subject/object of her work.

Like many of her generation, Gupta considers the electronic media to be a kind of extension of daily life and a filter via which the world is viewed. She also regards it as a democratic and interactive way of communicating and spreading art. For this reason she uses it quite frequently in her work, for instance in the now-celebrated Blessed Bandwidth.net, commissioned by the Tate in 2003, in which viewers were invited to register, choose a religion and download a blessing directly on line.

Gupta’s analysis of new technologies is not just designed to emphasize their positive aspects and potential. Indeed, she often stresses the way in which technology is used to control and to put up barriers rather than to facilitate the free circulation of ideas. In this respect the artist is critical of the capitalist and globalized system, which has led to cultural standardization, wars, terrorism and often a diminished or warped sense of the sacred as well.

Participation in numerous internationally important exhibition events – the Biennales of Sydney, Shanghai, Havana, Liverpool and Lyons, and the Yokohama Triennale, to mention just a few examples – has given her great visibility and established her as the leading Indian artist on the video art and new media scene.