SHILPA GUPTA – Today Will End
image: (c) Pat Verbruggen, Private collection, Courtesy of Wilde Gallery
1:14.9 1188.5 Miles of Fenced Border – West, North-West, 2011-2012
In 1:14.9 (2011–12), a hand-wound ball of thread is accompanied by a small plaque reading “1188.5 MILES OF FENCED BORDER – WEST, NORTH-WEST / DATA UPDATE: DEC 31, 2007.” Using sterile data about the fencing of the border between India and Pakistan extracted from a publicly available report by the Ministry of Home Affairs in India, she poetically represents the geopolitical division as a gleaming orb—a form that seems, at first, as abstract as the raw statistics from which it is derived. Yet the thread’s fragility reflects the tenuous nature of national boundaries, which demand constant restatement and surveillance. The object’s ovoid shape also suggests origins or genesis, and calls to mind the South Asian partition, which occurred either side of midnight on August 14, 1947, birthing two distinct nations in immediate succession.
Yap (J.)., Shilpa Gupta - 1:14.9 (1188.5 miles of fenced border - West, North-West), In: The Guggenheim Museum
