SHILPA GUPTA

1996

Video
Materials:

Collection: Courtesy of the Artist .

In her work Untitled (Eating a part of yourself), we see the artist ominously biting her fingernails. She is sitting on a window ledge, staring aimlessly through the glass, and a sense of anxiety can be seen clearly in her compulsive bad habit. We hear a voice off-camera repeating over and over “you are eating a part of yourself”. It is a modest work, presented on a very small video monitor, yet it is also amongst her formative. Inevitably she is peering out into, and seeking to understand, the society she lives in, and it is causing her to eat away at her fingers. Gupta previously stated about the work: “I tried to make a comment on the prevailing confusion and the way we consume ourselves subconsciously”. Untitled (Eating a part ofyourself) considers such effects on the subconscious that ultimately manifest in disquiet and auto-cannibalism. They were to become central and recurring concerns in her work over the following decades.