Probir Gupta’s Family is Plural attempts a repair of social and structural distortions
The exhibition is supported by Anant Art will be on display from December 6 – December 29, 2019 at the Bikaner House, New Delhi.
Probir Gupta’s artworks posit a cavernous political enquiry into pertinent subjects of urban politics, issues of migration, humanity and ‘stitching together’ myriad communities. Through the Family is Plural, the artist’s engagement attempts a repair of the existing social, environmental and structural distortions. An art activist, Probir Gupta has a deep bonding with the children of Salaam Baalak Trust, “My engagement with the underprivileged children on sustainability and other community development works are some of my major resources.”
Probir Gupta, Iconising the Blacks and Dalits, 2018
“The ultimate goal of desire in this time has come to represent the dissipation of truth and rights, as well as the depletion of planetary resources. Overarching despair has come to licit half-truths and falsehoods that now sustain the world’s affair.
How do we individually understand the history of loss?
Probir Gupta, Sacred Cows and Surrogate Mothers in a Scrap Market, 2018
In the case of the Delhi-based socially engaged artist, Probir Gupta, employs in his paintings, sculptures and installation work, a complex, interwoven narrative structure. The result is an immersive image wherein fragments of human activity blend, float up to be further crafted by the viewers’ personal knowledge and imagination. The ambition of the artist has always been to resolve the constructed sites of crisis with the minutiae of details often from his own observation of isolated acts of compassion or duty to humankind. Such a sovereign practice with indentured articulations including race, gender and caste make use of modernist visual art tropes to suggest both immediacy and the place of the infinitesimal event in the making of history. The overall result is a pool of sensual, defused, discoloured hues that train the eye and the mind to track the violence of local and transhistorical volatility.”
-Shaheen Merali, Curator
Probir Gupta, The Raft: In Memory of Gericault and Noah, 2019
Born in Kolkata in 1960, Probir Gupta graduated from the Government College of Arts and Crafts, Kolkata in 1981. He went on to study at the prestigious École Nationale Supérieure de Beaux-arts, Paris on a two-year French Government scholarship in 1982 and continued to live and work there until 1987. His works are straightforward, rife with narratives of political struggles, activism and historical developments. Over the years the artist has tried to sensitise people in respect to important social concerns dealing with human rights and liberation.
He has had numerous solo exhibitions in India and internationally in Berlin, London, New York, Brisbane, among others, and has participated in seminal national and international exhibitions all over the world. His recent selected participations include India Art Fair, New Delhi in 2019; Kochi Muziris Biennale, Kochi, India in 2018-19; Busan Biennale, South Korea in 2016 and The Empire Strikes Back: Indian Art Today, The Saatchi Gallery, London, 2010.
