Traversée Project

Traversée Project

Subodh Gupta, biography:

Surname: Gupta

Name: Subodh

Date and place of birth: 1964 in Khagaul in India

Place of life: New Delhi; India

Activities: plastic artist, he also does performance, video, photography, sculpture, or installations

Artistic movement: contemporary art

Famous artwork : Very Hungry God made in 2006

The artist steps: In his artwork and exposure, he wants to create an exchange with people: debates… and a favorable place for meetings . He’s associated this idea to the words/concept of “Adda” (in hindi).

S. Gupta works with icons of the Indian culture : cows, galvanized iron (electrified) ,kitchen utensils, Cow dung...

The work of Subodh Gupta tries to understand how all the emblematic objects of a culture make individual or collective identities and the political body of the nation itself.

"I live in India and I love to work on it " This his cult phrase.

Very hungry god

Very hungry god is a skull (we can say this is vanity ) composed exclusively of kitchen utensils like jars, pans , skimmers , covers , buckets in stainless steel.It is more than 4 meters tall. It’s an Indian carving made in 2006 for the all-nighter in the Saint-Bernard church (symbolic place of the migrant movement). It’s in tribute to the victims of the tsunami that took place on December 26, 2004, Subodh Gupta created this artwork.

Célestine

People tree

In the yard of a hotel, Gupta created « People Tree » a steel tree from which cooking utensils are hung. This artwork is from 2018.

In the installation, we see dishes, stove... The tones are cold and the colors are metallic.

The artist wants to represent the life of the Indian people by the utensils / objects. Subodh Gupta said : « It shines in the sun, but if you touch the hanging objects: they are empty and cold....». So, he compares the subject area of the tree with the lives of the people of his country.

Gupta was born in a poor town of India. He keeps a little bit of nostalgia for this period. So, Gupta wants to speak of the poverty of his town.

The spiritual Subodh also sees in the bottom of the used pot a kind of representation of the cosmos. As if every trace of human existence was a planet in itself.

Lucia

There is always cinema

This work represents a cinema in several rooms. a room is a theater room, where the stage is a mountain in metal, on the ground we can see trays. in another room, there are two old spotlights, one in gold and the other normal, next to the golden spotlight is golden and empty reel.

Vadim

Faith Matters

This artwork was realized in 2007 and is made with lunch boxes (boxes with compartments where we can put our lunch), some are brass and some are steel. These boxes are on a conveyor belt on a table. This artwork symbolizes the Indian food trip with this example: many Indian people eat Chinese food.

The message of this artwork also concerns the issue of hunger in India. The sparkling boxes represent the economic powerhouse of India, an emerging market country, and the sixth global power. And the fact that they are empty symbolize_ hunger and poverty because it concerns a large part of Indian people.

Bertille