Shilpa Gupta: Drawing in the Dark

Shilpa Gupta, a pioneering intermedia artist from South Asia and an iconoclast is interested in the threshold and liminal spaces, where distinctions are complicated. Refusing to be restricted to any identity, style or medium, Gupta has constantly probed and expanded the notions of borders, those on paper and within art practice. In the book ‘Drawing in the Dark’, we deep dive into her series on the Bengal Borderlands where she traces clandestine routes and flows that persist, despite the near completion of the world’s longest border fence between India and Bangladesh. Through interviews, photographs, records with incisions, smuggled everyday objects and drawings made from prohibited cough syrup and marijuana, Gupta’s incisive and poetic works unravel stories of desire, mobility, and ethics in the face of laws and censorship.