Shilpa Gupta (b. 1976) is a renowned contemporary artist from India, currently residing in Mumbai. In an exciting and rare opportunity to have access to her works an exhibition has been organised in a medieval castle of France until the end of October 2010.
Her work has been shown in leading international institutions and museums such as the Tate Modern and Serpentine Gallery in London, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Torino, Daimler Chrysler Contemporary in Berlin, Mori Museum in Tokyo, Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art in Oslo, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New Museum and Queens Museum in New York and Devi Art Foundation in Gurgaon, India amongst others.
Most of the pieces that we can feast our eyes on in the castle of Blandy have already been already exhibited in Paris or Lyon. But to exhibit them in the space of a medieval castle has the potential to change the way we receive and perceive them. Shilpa Gupta uses photography to create art installations: for example in 100 queues where she covered Tibetan prayer wheels with photographs of Indian people waiting in line. We don't know who those people are and why they are waiting. The installation gave us a deep sense of absurdity emphasised by the use of mills prayers that should ideally be infusing spirituality in us. Each of us could be one of those people following someone else without any clear goal or purpose in life. Is India searching for a way to go? A light at the end of a tunnel?

Detail of Shilpa Gupta's "100 Queues", 2007-2008
Photo by Ela Bialkowska; Courtesy Galleria Continua, San Gimignano / Beijing / Le Moulin and Yvon Lambert, Paris, New York
Prestel Publishers dedicated her a 248 page monography in 2010.
Blandy Art Tour(s) : until the 24th of October, Castle of Blandy-Les-Tours, France