Shilpa Gupta combines language, speech and sound to raise urgent questions around censorship, free expression, confinement and resistance, narrating powerful global stories.
The exhibition is centred around the installation, For, In Your Tongue, I Cannot Fit (2017–18), where microphones are hung above poetry pages suspended on metal spikes – each poet is someone incarcerated for their work, writings or beliefs, from the 8th to the 21st century. The result is both haunting and powerful, as Gupta highlights the fragility of a person’s right to personal expression, whilst drawing attention to injustice and prejudice, and taking a stance of solidarity.
A lot of the artist’s work is about physical and ideological boundaries, as well as how we come to feel a sense of isolation or belonging. Through works like this she amplifies global stories and gives a voice back to the silenced. The installation will be accompanied by an entirely new body of work in text, sculpture, video, photography and sound, expanding on the same poignant themes.
This exhibition will take place in The Curve.
![Othello De'Souza-Hartley, from Absence (triptych) [detail]. From the commission Blind, but I can See, 2020. Commissioned by Autograph.](https://bigbangartfund-assets.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/whats-on/events/2021/care-contagion-community-self-and-other/db59eb6834a0d0422e4c249be54b7980-landscape.jpg)
