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Shilpa Gupta

Born 1976, Mumbai, India. Lives and works in Mumbai.

Shilpa Gupta's application of new media technologies in her works reveals an interest in how the, now all pervasive, media affects our understanding of the world. She sees technology as an extension of body, mind and life lived, and there is typically an alert political consciousness inherent in her explorations. Using new media's ability to create cause and effect scenarios, Gupta invites the viewer to participate in a series of choices which reveal the default political assumptions at the core of most popular media. Ongoing works like her photographic and performative series based on the proverb of the three wise monkeys, Don't see don't hear don't speak, 2007-9, and more recently Threat, 2009, explore the psychology of fear and prejudice in a bid to critique the social injustice of globalisation. She believes firmly in the space of art as a space for individual freedoms, and uses the largely accessible forms of new media to entice non-art audiences who are familiar with its 'mass production' and distribution.

For a major project While I Sleep, Le Laboratoire, Paris, 2009, Gupta worked alongside psychologist and Harvard professor Mahazarin Banaji on the reception of images. This exhibition resulted in a major new sculptural work Singing Cloud, 2008-9, which features 4,000 microphones each with an independent acoustic track. Gupta has shown in numerous biennials, including most recently the 7th Gwangju Biennale, 2008; the Yokohama Triennale, 2008; the 3rd Seville Biennial, 2008; the 15th Biennale of Sydney, 2006; and the Liverpool Biennial, 2006. Among her many group exhibitions are the New Museum's first generational triennial Younger than Jesus, New York, 2009 and The World Is Yours, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark, 2009.

Venue: Auckland Art Gallery