There Is No Border Here
Shilpa Gupta
2005-2006, India
Self-adhesive tape
Indian artist Shilpa Gupta often uses found or temporary materials to address urgent issues related to human migration and the distribution of information, in the context of historical and cultural violence. The work ‘There Is No Border Here’, a flimsy flag made of words formed by self-adhesive tape, is part of Gupta’s exploration of the concept of borders, nationality, and identity.
The piece challenges the idea of fixed boundaries and questions the significance of national flags as symbols of identity. With the use of self-adhesive tape, Gupta introduces a temporary and impermanent material, suggesting the fluidity and transience of borders. Associated with repair and construction, the tape emphasizes the idea that borders are human-made constructs which can be altered or dismantled.
The taped words form a poem expressing that no boundaries can be drawn in the air, the final sentence looping back to the beginning:
‘i tried very hard to cut the sky in half, one for my lover and one for me. but the sky kept moving and clouds from his territory came into mine. i tried pushing it away, with both my hands, harder and harder but the sky kept moving and clouds from my territory went into his. i brought a sofa and placed it in the middle, but the clouds kept floating over it. i built a wall in the middle, but the sky started to flow through it. i dug a trench, and then it rained and the sky made clouds over the trench. i tried very hard to cut…’
Shilpa Gupta (b.1976) lives and works in Mumbai, India where she studied sculpture at the Sir J. J. School of Fine Arts from 1992 to 1997.
She had solo shows at Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, Arnolfini in Bristol, OK in Linz, Museum voor Moderne Kunst in Arnhem, Voorlinden Museum and Gardens in Wassenaar, Kiosk in Ghent, Barbican in London, Dallas Contemporary and the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein in Berlin, Bielefelder Kunstverein, La synagogue de Delme Contemporary Art Center and Lalit Kala Akademi in New Delhi. In 2021 she had a survey show at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp curated by Nav Haq. She presented a solo project at ‘My East is Your West’, a two-person joint India-Pakistan exhibition, by the Gujral Foundation in Venice in 2015.
Gupta’s work has been shown in leading international institutions and museums such as Tate Modern, Museum of Modern Art, Louisiana Museum, Centre Pompidou, Serpentine Gallery, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Mori Museum, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, ZKM, Ishara Art Foundation, Kiran Nadar Museum and Devi Art Foundation.