अनहद / Unstruck: A Walkthrough with Subodh Gupta and Germano Celant

Subodh Gupta was born in 1964 in Khagaul, Bihar, and studied at the College of Art, Patna (1983-1988), before moving to New Delhi, where he continues to live and work. Trained as a painter, Gupta is very uninhibited about the use of media (or scale.) Arranging traditional utensils, pots, and pans, Gupta approaches the readymade items with a Duchampian irony, while also offering social commentary, playing on the clichéd images of India’s rapidly changing society. In identifying Indian icons that possess innate dichotomies, such as a colonial-style ambassador’s car, sacred cow dung, or the stainless steel utensils of a typical South Asian kitchen, Gupta questions the ambivalence of a society caught between traditional customs and globalization, booming wealth and impoverishment, and old caste politics and religious beliefs. In 2007, Gupta’s sculpture Very Hungry God, was exhibited in front of Palazzo Grassi, parallel to the Venice Biennale. In 2013, he was awarded the Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Letters, among the highest honours given out by the French government. In 2014 his mid-career survey was seen at the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, curated by Germano Celant. And late in 2015, his monumental sculpture When Soak Becomes Spill was installed in front of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

Germano Celant is a renowned art historian and curator, internationally acknowledged for coining the name of movement Arte Povera. He has authored over 100 publications, including both books and catalogues, and has curated exhibitions in the prominent international museums and institutions worldwide. From 1989 to 2008, Celant was the Senior Curator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. In 1997 he served as Director of the Venice Biennale and he has been a contributing Editor to Artforum since 1977. Celant has been Director of the Fondazione Prada, Milan since 1995.