A bodiless voice emanates from a microphone in a room lit by a single lightbulb. The voice states the names of 100 poets across time and space followed by the year they were detained or incarcerated by their state. A reverse-wired microphone renders an uncanny switch in communication; the microphone is unusable to the viewer. The speaker’s words are unshakeable, and the once-censored names now exist, quite literally, on the record. In Shilpa Gupta’s Untitled (2023), she utilizes the reverse-engineered microphone as a tool to make her audience listen and wonder what has been left unsaid. Throughout Gupta’s exhibition, spread across two spaces at Amant, the invisible takes up more space than the visible, highlighting the ways in which political censorship erases individual expression.
Shilpa Gupta: I did not tell you what I saw, but only what I dreamt
by Priya Gandhi | The Brooklyn Rail
For, In Your Tongue, I Cannot Fit (2023) is a memorial to a history of censorship. A mix of gun metal-casted books and wooden books fill four shelves. Light bulbs on long black wires snake through the shelves, giving the work a soft and welcoming glow. From afar, the books look leather-bound, ready to be picked up and read. As the viewer approaches, the gun metal casts glisten and the wooden books flatten, revealing only the impression of pages that cannot be turned. The façade of knowledge leaves the viewer with only the text on the covers. The book titles state the name of a poet imprisoned due to their writings, the title of their publication, and the date. We are left with untold stories, another reminder of the importance of the unsaid.
26 August 2024
