Shilpa Gupta: Drawing in the Dark

Shilpa Gupta is a pioneering intermedia artist from South Asia who explores the boundaries between identities, styles, and mediums. Her series on the Bengal Borderlands reveals stories of desire, mobility, and ethics in the face of laws and censorship through interviews, photographs, records, and drawings.

Format: Hardback
Length: 264 pages
Publication date: 08 April 2021
Publisher: Hatje Cantz

Shilpa Gupta, a pioneering intermedia artist hailing from South Asia, is renowned for her iconoclastic approach to exploring the boundaries between spaces. With an unwavering refusal to be confined to any specific identity, style, or medium, Gupta has relentlessly pushed the boundaries of borders, both physical and artistic. In her captivating book titled "Drawing in the Dark," we delve into her series on the Bengal Borderlands, where she uncovers hidden routes and flows that persist, despite the nearing completion of the world's longest border fence between India and Bangladesh. Gupta's artistic creations are a testament to her insightful and poetic exploration of desire, mobility, and ethics in the face of laws and censorship. Through a combination of interviews, photographs, records with incisions, smuggled everyday objects, and drawings made from prohibited cough syrup and marijuana, Gupta's works unravel captivating stories that shed light on the complexities of human experiences within these borderlands.

Weight: 958g
Dimension: 174 x 239 x 34 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9783775747219