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by Sophia Powers

Just outside the entrance to the Kashmere Gate Metro station sits an oversized pail on a pedestal. It is a stark and shiny contrast to the unmanicured grime it towers over, and makes the walk to the metro feel a bit like a Desi version of Alice in Wonderland (I ate the samosa which made me shrink). The erection of this work is no small feat, however, as it is a significant step towards closing the gap between the elite and majority experience of contemporary art.

Subodh Gupta—the artist behind the Pail, is the present day poster-child for Indian contemporary art’s global success. Born into a middle class family in India’s poorest state, Bihar, Gupta’s story is a rags-to-riches fairy tale that has captivated art lovers across India and abroad. Year after year, his sculptural installations command attention both at the critical art event (like last year’s Venice Biennale), and the auction house (last year’s record prices for Christie’s and Sotheby’s). He is best known for his Tiffin-box pieces—mostly monumental sculptures built from the lunch boxes that everyday Indian folks carry to and from work.

There has been much critical writing about how this art defamiliarizes and monumentalizes the mundane. Fair enough. What such a perspective glosses over is that (like high art around the world), this elevation of the everyday is hardly available to the gaze of everyday people who actually lug heavy buckets from the village well to the one-room home where the morning tea is brewed. But this paradox is also well worn to the point of cliche.

Though it is doubtful that Subodh Gupta’s monumental bucket will revolutionize the common man’s relationship to their own all-too alienated labor, at least he has a chance of seeing it! The metro itself is an anomalous monument to equality in a city rife with class violence and injustice. Almost everybody rides it. This sculpture too, might mean something to people across the economic chasm that divides Delhi. Unlikely, but at least it’s a step in the right direction.

--Sophia Powers

(Image - courtesy of the artist and Artslant)

Posted by Sophia Powers on 7/25 | tags: sculpture