Visual essay

Indian to international: stainless steel’s impact on thesuccess of Subodh Gupta

Allie Biswas*

This essay examines the success of contemporary Indian artistSubodh Gupta, exploring how his international acclaim has beenbased on the use of stainless steel in his work. Whilst formand material in Gupta’s sculptures and installations have beenexplored, I ground stainless steel within a clearer post-colonialsetting and relate this specific narrative to the artist’s usage of thematerial, thereby raising new questions about the relevance ofstainless steel in Gupta’s oeuvre/career.

Keywords: Subodh Gupta; Indian; international; stainless steel;utensils; post-colonial; success

Line of Control (2008, Figure 1) is a work by the artist Subodh Gupta. It isperhaps his best known work. The installation formed the centrepieceof the fourth Tate Triennial, Altermodern, which took place at TateBritain, London, in spring 2009. Made entirely out of hundreds ofstainless steel kitchen utensils soldered together, Line of Controlascended over 100 metres from the floor to the ceiling of the centralexhibition space, the historic Duveen Gallery. What resulted was aformidable mushroom-cloud structure. The sense of scale was intensi-fied by the work’s composition: the highest and most substantialsection of the installation, densely compressed with the greaterproportion of stainless steel objects, was held up by the middlecomponent � the part of the configuration that looked the least robust.

Not only, then, was Line of Control imposing due to its size, but alsobecause of the way in which its weight was distributed, as though thework was made out of parts that looked as if they were merelybalancing on top of one another and might, at any moment, collapse. Itwas, perhaps, this precariousness that inflated the work’s theatricaldimensions. The monumentality, however, was not only generated bysize and composition, but also by its materiality. The smooth,untarnished stainless steel objects diffused light, a contrast with the

*Email: biswas.allie@gmail.com

World ArtVol. 1, No. 2, September 2011, 197�214

ISSN 2150-0894 print/ISSN 2150-0908 online

# 2011 Taylor & Francis

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21500894.2011.602710

http://www.tandfonline.com

Figure 1. Line of Control, 2008, stainless steel and steel structure, stainlesssteel utensils 1000�1000�1000 cm # Subodh Gupta. Courtesy the artist,Arario Gallery and Hauser & Wirth.

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Figure 2. God Hungry, 2006, stainless steel utensils, dimensions variable. Eglisede Sainte-Marie-Madeleine, France. # Subodh Gupta.

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compact solidity of the vessels themselves, creating not only anawareness of the installation’s materials but a further amplification ofits vastness. Although the shape of each utensil, whether a plate,saucepan or bowl, was unelaborate, the overall effect was highlyflamboyant, the installation’s natural glint exaggerated by carefullypositioned lights.

Understanding Gupta’s work in terms of its materiality is, I suggestin this essay, central to an understanding of Gupta as an internationalartist and helps us to account for his reception by the contemporaryart world and his significant place within it. I explore why the artist’strademark material signalled such success, principally enacted ininternational contexts, and has cemented his reputation. Also, whilstthere has been analysis of his use of material and form, I would like toreclaim a post-colonial context for his work, grounding Gupta’s use ofstainless steel within a specific narrative of the Indian nation.

Gupta was born in 1964 in a village in the state of Bihar, in the east ofIndia, and trained in Patna at the College of Arts & Crafts. He is now basedin Delhi where he has beenworking since 1990. Gupta is part of a group ofartists originating from India who have become critically acknowledgedand have exhibited internationally in the last decade. Some have, likeGupta, gained representation with leading European galleries, such asJitish Kallat, or exhibited substantially at prominent institutions, such asRaqsMedia Collective.1 Many of these artists cross genres by working in avariety of media. This is the case with Gupta, who makes installations,sculptures, paintings, video art, as well as performance works. He has,however, become renowned for works such as Line of Control which areformed entirely of stainless steel utensils, and it is these sculptures andinstallations (Figure 2 and Figure 3) which catapulted him into the globalarena in a way that his peers have not been able to do.

1. Early works

Gupta has not always based his work on the stainless steel utensil. Theartist’s early works, made in the mid to late 1990s, used a particularartistic vocabulary, concerned with material rich in reference to thenatural world and specifically alluding to his background. The materialsused in works such as Bihari (Figure 4) and My Mother and Me (Figure 5)are completely removed, formally and compositionally, from the man-made objects which dominate later works. Bihari, a self-portrait wherethe artist focuses on the fashioning of personal identity, depicts Gupta’shead emerging from a background made of smeared cow dung. The

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pure, unrefined nature of the material is emphasised by the way Guptahas coarsely applied it; the artist’s hand is clearly visible, making thisapproach stand somewhat in opposition to the impersonal nature of thefactory-mademetal objects used in later works. This is also underlined bythe hand-made paper on which the painting has been composed.

During this period the artist also made My Mother and Me (Figure 5),a structure comprised of cow-dung pats, which was installed in Indiaover 14 days; a video work entitled Pure (1999, Hauser & Wirth Gallery,London), which involved the artist covering himself in cow dung,exploring meanings attached to this ‘sacred’ material in Hinduism; thiswas also the theme in the performance work Untitled (1999), KhojInternational Artist’s Association, India) in which the artist lay,unclothed, covered by the ground.

Critical acclaim

These works from the early stages of Gupta’s career were exhibited inarts institutions in India and Japan, and whilst they are now recognised

Figure 3. Five Offerings for the Greedy Gods, 2006�2008, stainless steelutensils, dimensions variable. Arario Gallery, Beijing; Galleria Continua, SanGimigano. # Subodh Gupta.

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as critical to Gupta’s oeuvre (signalling his artistic transition, if nothingelse), works such as Line of Control (Figure 1) and 5 Offerings for theGreedy Gods (Figure 3) are those which made Gupta renowned inEurope and America, and consequently within the art world at large.The artist has been participating in the international exhibition circuitfor just over a decade now, but it is only in the last five years, due toEuropean and American interest, that he has become recognisedworldwide. He is now arguably the most successful Indian artistworking today, as I outline below. Critics writing about Gupta alwaystend to stress his importance within the art world and how successfulhe is, assessed by his participation in numerous international group andsolo exhibitions and the rising price of his work at auction. For the firsttime, in 2008, Gupta featured in ArtReview’s annual ‘Power 100’ list,which details the art world’s most important figures, entering atnumber 85; the art magazine Frieze has described Gupta as a ‘superstarartist’ (O’Toole 2009, 36) and, in February 2011, Gupta was invited tocontribute to Absolut Vodka’s art collection. The prominent drinks

Figure 4. Bihari, 1999, handmade paper, acrylic, cow dung in PVA solution,LED lights with timer and transformer, 127 x 96 x 8cm. Private Collection,Japan. # Subodh Gupta.

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brand has collaborated with artists over the last 30 years, includingAndy Warhol and Louise Bourgeois; Gupta was the first Indian visualartist to be asked to participate. The result was a 4-foot version of thewell-known Absolut bottle crammed with stainless steel utensils(Figure 6).

Whilst Gupta is necessarily aligned with his contemporaries, he is theonly Indian artist who has been termed as an international, rather thanas an emphatically Indian, artist. This has transpired largely in two ways:beginning in November 2008 Gupta was the first Indian artist to be soldnot only within the South Asian Art sales at Christie’s, but also in thePost War & Contemporary Art sales, alongside European and Americanartists.2 Even today there are only two other Indian artists, apart fromGupta, to whom this situation also applies.3 The artist was also includedwithin the Contemporary Art sale held by Sotheby’s in New York in May

Figure 5. My Mother and Me, 1997, cow dung cakes and ash, 368 x 368 x368cm. # Subodh Gupta.

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2008, and in this sale Gupta was the only Indian artist to feature; othernames included Francis Bacon, Mark Rothko and Gerhard Richter.Secondly, and perhaps of more impact in relation to Gupta’s reception,many contemporary Indian artists have gained exposure by being

Figure 6. Absolut Subodh Gupta, 2011. # Absolut Vodka.

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placed within their (Indian) peer group and exhibited accordingly;prominent group shows to have been curated in this manner include‘Indian Summer’, Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris (2005); ‘Indian Highway’,Serpentine Gallery, London (2008); and, most recently, ‘The EmpireStrikes Back’, Saatchi Gallery, London (2010).

Gupta, however, has primarily succeeded in gaining attention byexisting outside of this system. Significantly, he was one of the firstcontemporary Indian artists to exhibit at the Venice Biennale,participating in ‘Always a Little Further’ (2005) � the internationalexhibition staged in the Arsenale that shows artists who are notrepresented by the permanent national pavilions. In this show he wasthe only Indian artist to be invited to exhibit. That Line of Control wasexhibited within a major exhibition at Tate Britain indicates the prestigeattached to Gupta in the contemporary art world and market. Theprices of Gupta’s works have, from 2005�2008, increased 52 timeswithin the international auction-house circuit (Kilachand 2008) and,since the end of 2008, Gupta has been represented by Hauser & Wirth,a highly revered and high-profile European gallery with branchesworldwide. The inaugural exhibition of the gallery’s Zurich space, whichopened in September 2010, was, in fact, a show of Gupta’s work,consisting of both old and new sculptures and paintings. Gupta hassecured 23 solo exhibitions around the world since 2004, as well asnumerous group showings which have ranged from surveys oncontemporary Indian art to exhibitions that have specifically notused concepts of nationality as a curatorial foundation, such as‘Contemplating the Void: Interventions in the Guggenheim Museum’,Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2010).

The year 1997 can now be considered a seminal year in Gupta’s careeras it marks his transition into the international arena. That year the artisttook up an international residency at the Gasworks Gallery in Londonwhich enabled him to further his ideas about his background, andresulted in works aesthetically similar to My Mother and Me (Figure 5) inthe way that they comprised of organic materials native to India, such askum-kum powder and turmeric, and were informed by his spiritualexperiences of tradition ‘past and present . . . touching myths, rituals,personal and abstract aspects of my everyday life’ (Gasworks Gallery1997, 38). After this residency, Gupta began to be noticed in New York,exhibiting in the group show ‘Points of Contact’ at the Shirley FitermanGallery, obtaining another residency at the Triangle Artists’ Workshopand, finally, winning the Bose Pacia Gallery’s Emerging Artist Awardwhich culminated in a solo exhibition. Although Gupta was now

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exhibiting internationally, continuing to participate in programmesworldwide, such as the ‘Negotiations’ exhibition in Sete, France(2000) and ‘Post Production’ in San Gimignano, Italy (2001), it wasonly in 2002 that he started to gain recognition and attention fromprominent art dealers and galleries, but had yet to find an audience inIndia. Gupta is intensely aware of this irony: ‘Art is a long journey,’ hesaid in 2008. ‘So I’ve been working for 8�10 years almost for Europeangalleries and at that time nobody in India knew about it’ (Kilachand2008, p. 33). The works that first gained the West’s attention (and then,consequently, India’s approval) were the stainless steel sculptures andinstallations that Gupta started making in the early 2000s. Gupta’sinstallation The Way Home (II) (Figure 9) is important precisely becauseof its introduction of stainless steel, and works such as Curry (Figure 7),and then Line of Control (Figure 1), develop the handling and usage ofthis particular material even more, so that it ultimately dominates theentire sculpture or installation. Robert Huber, a distinguished art dealerfrom Switzerland whose gallery, Art & Public, in Geneva representssome of the most critically acclaimed minimalist and conceptual artistsin the Western canon, including Sol Le Witt and Sigmar Polke, cameacross Gupta’s work in the late 1990s and then invited the artist todisplay an installation at the Armory Show, New York in 2002. Whenasked about Gupta’s work, Huber has commented that he ‘spied inthem something different � something I had seen in American andChinese artists much before either contingent became appealing toEuropean collectors’ (Kilachand 2008). This possibly suggests that the‘meaning’ or ‘significance’ of the works was obscured and had to be

Figure 7. Curry, 2006, five stainless steel cabinets and stainless steel utensils,360 x 279cm. Europe, Private Collection. # Subodh Gupta.

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subtly interpreted (‘spied’) by a (Western) connoisseur. The stainlesssteel works therefore possess a certain quality that Huber recognised ashaving a particular appeal � to put it crudely, the quality Huber saw inthem was marketability to the West. It was only after Huber hadstrategically placed the artist’s work in a series of exhibitions, includingthe group show ‘This Side is the Other Side’ at his own gallery in 2002and then the Havana Biennale in 2003, that Gupta’s status in the artworld became more substantial.4

It was at the Frieze Art Fair, London in 2005 (represented by Art &Public) that Gupta shifted from existing within an internationalperiphery to becoming established on the international main stage.On this occasion, a critic from The Art Newspaper declared (with boldreference to the materiality of the works) ‘in a metallic flash everythingchanged’ (cited in Harris 2009). Given this giant leap � a transition thatsurprised even Huber, who said ‘We’re not used to an artist in Europegoing from nothing to what happened with Subodh’. What is imperativeto examine are the works that allowed Gupta to gain entrance to suchan exclusive arena; particularly so for a non-Western artist. The artistexhibited 10 works at Frieze and they were all medium-scale sculpturesmade entirely of stainless steel utensils. Works shown included Curry(Figure 7) and Thing (2005) � a variation on Pink Chimta (Figure 8).Certain key works dominated the space: apart from the stainless steelbucket, Untitled 3 (Bucket), which measured over two metres in height,a series of three works entitled Feast for Hundred and Eight Gods werethe most significant, similar to Line of Control (Figure 1) in how intenselyprecarious they are in aesthetic. A carefully constructed mound ofgoblets and stackable, miniature tiffin box containers (‘the kind in which90 percent of India carries its lunch’5), each work gives the impressionthat it might collapse into a less organised heap on the floor at anymoment. Contained both neatly and haphazardly within a stainless steelround tray acting as a foundation, Feast for Hundred and Eight Gods pre-empted the (much) larger-scale works that Gupta went on to create,such as Five Offerings for the Greedy Gods (Figure 3), using the samestructural tendencies and the same materials. It could therefore beconcluded that it is Gupta’s stainless steel works that have ultimatelygarnered success for him, whether in terms of exhibitions, high profilecollectors or auction prices.

It would seem that these works, and not earlier works in Gupta’soeuvre, allowed the artist to participate in a different sphere6 � theupper tiers, as it were, of the art world. The issue of ‘Indianness’consequently comes to the fore.

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Indianness

The sculpture Curry (2006; Figure 7) is a work that perhaps demo-nstrates most strongly how slippery the notion of ‘Indianness’ can bein Gupta’s work. Consisting of five identical hollow stainless-steel

Figure 8. Pink Chimta, 2008, steel structure, plastic and stainless steelpincers, 218 x 228 x 58cm. Private Collection, USA. # Subodh Gupta.

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cabinets positioned in a row on the wall, lined up immaculately withappliances from the Indian kitchen, Curry depicts a diametricallyopposed image to the one that is usually conjured up when thinkingabout the national dish of India. Gupta deliberately subverts astereotypical emblem and, in the process, edifies it. Instead ofpresenting content, the actual stuff itself � a combination of coloursand textures formed in an inelegant heap on a plate � Gupta’s workoffers a new possibility of (national) representation. The allusions wehave about this dish � an essentially common food (balti cuisine),unrefined due to its simplicity and availability, commodified (currysauce) and cheap (take-away) � are upturned. The stark simplicity ofeach cabinet produces a clinical, ‘clean’ effect which the meticulousarrangement of the utensils mirrors. Instead of invoking in moreobvious ways the vibrancy we conventionally associate with Indiancurry, Gupta presents us with the complete opposite. In doing so, theartist elevates the status of an Indian emblem, transforming it intosomething that is now presented as stylish and complex, indicated bythe range of devices that are required to produce and complete themeal � certainly a contrast to the single jar bought in the Westernsupermarket. What is most significant about this work is that all of thecomments I have made about it stem essentially from its title, Curry.Using that as a basis has allowed for it to be read in terms of its‘Indianness’. If one was to look at this sculpture, without being awareof its title, it is quite likely that one would not associate it with anIndian kitchen. Even if the utensils are recognised as originating fromIndia, due to the composition of the work and its monotonousaesthetic, comprising of geometric lines in repetition, this work couldbe representative of any kitchen worldwide. It is this lack of clarity thatmakes it a complicated work to define in terms of its ‘Indianness’.Commenting on Curry, Gupta confronted this paradox head-on: ‘It’sstraight out of any Indian kitchen, but it’s still universal’ (The Telegraph2007, 12). Another sculpture entitled Pink Chimta (Figure 8) inhabits thesame space as Curry in terms of its resistance to being interpreted asan emphatically ‘Indian’ work. Distinct from Gupta’s other work,particularly those made of stainless steel utensils, the work’s colourcould be identified as being a particularly Indian visual trope due to itsvivid pink hue. Bright pigments are often associated with religious(Hindu) ceremonies and are an image that we have come to relate toIndian life, particularly quotidian culture.7

This sculpture is displayed on a wall and consists entirely of thechimta (a long, thin, flat piece of folded stainless steel used as tongs

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when cooking chapati bread). It is as common in India as any of theother steel utensils found in Gupta’s other works. Had they not beenpainted pink, these tongs may have been recognisable as instrumentsfrom the kitchen, but Gupta’s addition to this basic utensil transforms itinto an object that seems unrelated both aesthetically and functionallyto the original. The image of the chimta changes from a flat andrelatively insignificant object, to its opposite: a large bulbous object, asvoluminous as it is rotund. The sparseness of each individual tong isemphasised by being situated next to many more and, combinedtogether, the overall effect changes from austerity to sensuality. From adistance, in fact, Pink Chimta gives the impression that it is soft to touch,akin to a giant ball of tinsel. The utilitarian nature of this Indian utensil isreplaced by something that is distinctly un-usable.

Stainless steel � a material history

Stainless steel has a very particular and important relationship withIndia. After cutting all colonial ties from the British Empire, JawaharlalNehru, first prime minister and ‘architect’ of independent India, setabout structuring a new nation (Sinha, Sinha, and Shekhar 2004).A significant part of his proposals involved state planning andeconomic management, and Nehru’s first Five Year Plan in 1951mapped out the government’s commitment to investing in business,taking control of industries such as mining and electricity. Along withthis, India’s new government initiated projects to enhance structuralsystems, building dams and canals. The Industrial Policy Resolution of1956 (a modification of the earlier plan from 1948) promoted newindustrial policies, encouraging the growth of diverse manufacturingand heavy industries. Industries were categorised into three groups, inorder of how close the relationship would be between industry andstate. The first category, within which steel was situated, groupedindustries under the exclusive responsibility of the state. The role andstatus of steel in this period were therefore of great significance,playing a crucial part in the formation of a planned industry in a now‘sovereign democratic republic’ (Sinha, Sinha, and Shekhar 2004,chapter 5, p. 83.). Bhaskar Mukhopadhyay has encouraged comparisonbetween the importance of stainless steel in post-imperial India andthe use of aluminium by Futurist artists at the beginning of thetwentieth century.8 Declaring a reverence for all things new �technology, industry, high-speed travel � futurist artists advocatedthe use of metal bolts to transform men into machines; for them, such

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values were epitomised in the recent invention of aluminium. Whilstthe purpose of stainless steel in both 1950s India and Gupta’s workmay not be as sensational, the contextual and political significance ofboth metallic materials is certainly equal in terms of their marking ofnewness, manufacturing and mass production. Stainless steel, then,becomes a definitive marker of modernity � of India’s modernity � asign of a newly industrialised state having arrived. In negotiatingmodernity, India creates a substance that becomes the signature for anew mass culture. Gupta’s use of this material consequently enables adenigration of tradition and a likening with the project of India as amodern state: a move away from the rural and unsophisticated; arejection of the non-industrial; and a development from Bihari throughto Line of Control. By doing this, the artist presupposes his location inIndia’s artistic history.

However, it is not merely materiality that is of concern here but,very particularly, objecthood. And the specificity of the formsemployed only emphasises the political and historical significations.Gupta could have utilised tubes or columns of stainless steel, ormoulded the material to create new shapes on which to base hissculptures. Instead, he has taken traditional objects that alreadyreverberate with meaning. In their original Indian context, theseutensils are associated with domestic and religious realms, used inthe kitchen or to carry out parts of a Hindu ceremony. They areessentially mundane � viewed as a marker of the vernacular; signifyingthe cheap and mass-produced. Yet, as Curry and Pink Chimtademonstrate, Gupta does something very specific with these forms �he takes a traditional object and then estranges it. The concept ofdetournement, created by the Situationist International movement(1957�1972), is helpful here. Detournement � to divert or distort; inessence, to turn something aside from its normal course or purpose �applies to the way in which the stainless steel utensil can be viewed inGupta’s work, as the main impact of detournement relates to adifferent scope emerging from a new context, whilst correspondingdirectly to the conscious or semi-conscious recollection of the originalcontexts of the elements.9 Gupta’s work is inherently difficult todefine, despite the powerful and immediate impact of his gleaming andoften immense sculptures. They are ‘hybrids’, in the sense of thediscourses of post-coloniality. Whilst Annie E. Coombes and Avtar Brahhave noted the difficulties in the use of this term, in that it has acquiredthe status of a common-sense word both within and outside ofacademia, these writers have also shown that critical readings, which

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take into consideration the social, cultural and political practices withinwhich it is embedded at any given time, can reward us with morenuanced accounts of post-colonial culture (Brah and Coombes 2000).Hybridity can be a positive sign of the emergence of new cultural formswhich have derived from what could be seen as shared ‘borrowings’and exchanges across national ethnic boundaries (Brah and Coombes2000). Gupta’s ability to take an Indian object and renew it, whether bydoing something to the object itself (Pink Chimta; Figure 8) or bymanipulating its meaning (Curry; Figure 7), is not simply a case of Guptaproducing art that is formally Western from objects that are Indian, butrather that the merging of the two produces something new. Gupta’sutilisation of the stainless-steel utensil ultimately signifies a crossing ofnational boundaries and suggests new ways of not only looking at andthinking about a familiar object but also questioning its place withinIndian history past and present.

Figure 9. The Way Home (II), 2001, Fiberglass, stainless steel utensils,aluminum, chrome and sun film, variable dimension, London, Hauser & WirthGallery. # Subodh Gupta.

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Acknowledgements

Thank you Dan Rycroft, Bhaskar Mukhopadhyay, Alice Sanger, RobertManiura and Patrizia di Bell0.

Notes

1. Solo exhibitions include: The Wherehouse, Brussels, Palais des Beaux Arts,Brussels (2004); The KD Vyas Correspondence Vol. 1, Museum of Commu-nication, Frankfurt (2006); Oracle and Heirophants, Ikon, Birmingham(2009); and Lightbox, Tate Britain, London (2009).

2. At this time, the only other South Asian artist who this situation applied tois the Pakistani artist Rashid Rana. Information obtained from Farah RahimIsmail, Specialist of Contemporary South Asian Art at Christie’s, London,during a telephone conversation, July 2009.

3. Jitish Kallat and Bharti Kher are nowalso sold in both categories at Christie’s.4. It was Huber who obtained representation for Gupta from the Jack

Shainman Gallery in New York, which culminated in Gupta’s first soloexhibition in America, in 2008.

5. Quote by Subodh Gupta in Mooney (2007, 54).6. To date, Gupta’s highest-selling work has been the sculpture Untitled

(2007): a circular stainless steel tray measuring just over two metres,containing a range of stainless steel tiffin utensils, which sold for £601, 250at Christie’s in London, June 2008. The artist’s lowest-selling work isUntitled (Cotton Wicks) (1997) � a wooden box containing cotton wicksoften used in Hindu ceremonies � which was sold for £15,000 in the samelot at Christie’s in June 2008.

7. Diana Vreeland’s comment ‘Pink � it’s the navy blue of India’ is still quotedtoday and sums up the colourful nature of Indian life (particularly on thestreet) whether literal or otherwise. See Donovan (1962, 30). Galleryowner and art critic Peter Nagy has written on contemporary Indianculture: ‘By simply walking down the street, by visiting bustling marketsand houses of worship, one encounters constructions, assemblages andactions which, to western eyes completely unaccustomed to such things,resemble nothing other than a wide variety of experimental art formsproduced in the West during the past fifty years’ (Nagy 2002).

8. During conversation, January 2010.9. See Debord (1994) and Knabb (2006).

Notes on Contributor

Allie Biswas holds a BA in English Literature (King’s College London) and anMA in History of Art (Birkbeck College). Her research interests includecontemporary Indian art and interdisciplinarity in twentieth century art,particularly in relation to sensory perception and the environment. She worksin the Research Department at Tate Britain, London, and recently undertookthe Fall Internship Program at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

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