Shilpa Gupta

For decades, Shilpa Gupta has developed an artistic practice that interrogates notions of identity and belonging. Through sculpture, installation, and drawing, the artist explores nationalism, control, censorship,
and the dynamics of border zones. In a global context marked by the rise of authoritarian regimes and a media ecosystem increasingly subject to the influence of power, issues such as otherness, individual rights, and freedom of expression have taken on renewed urgency. In Map Tracing #9, Gupta reconstructs the outline of Italy using a copper tube, generating a three-dimensional silhouette that simultaneously subverts the recognizability of the geographical form. The familiar profile of national borders is thus transformed into a sinuous, abstract, and elusive line. Through this visual short circuit, the artist draws attention to the artificiality of borders and their constructed nature, suggesting how every representation is, first and foremost, a projection. In dialogue with the thought of philosopher Étienne Balibar – who asserts that “the representation of the border is itself the condition of any definition” – the work underscores the conventional nature of borders and their intrinsic perceptual instability: like a kaleidoscope, they shift according to the viewpoints and perspectives from which they are observed.