‘Lines of Flight’: Shilpa Gupta examines borders in her first solo in West Asia

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. In the third gallery at Ishara Art Foundation in Dubai, you walk into a dimly-lit room with five suspended microphones. Instead of being listening devices, these mics have been transformed into speakers reciting poetry from across time and space—Hum Dekhenge by Faiz Ahmed Faiz, which has become a protest anthem in some Indian universities, a martyr’s song in Gondi, and a rendition of text by Nigerian poet-environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa.

Titled Listening Air, this artwork by Shilpa Gupta carries forth the artist’s preoccupation with the spoken word and ways in which poets and writers transcend boundaries of what can and cannot be spoken. Listening Air, which was shown at Bikaner House in Delhi recently, speaks of resistance and resilience, where words of Faiz, Ken Saro Wiva and others have travelled across generations, in different languages from Spanish, English, Cantonese and more. She combines text with sculpture and drawing to use language as a medium of resistance and justice.

Listening Air forms a part of Lines of Flight, Gupta’s first solo exhibition in West Asia, to be on view at the Ishara Art Foundation till 31 May. The show features a selection of works from 2006 to the present, including sound installations, site-specific interventions, sculptural works, drawings, prints, videos, and more. According to curator Sabih Ahmed, the exhibition foregrounds the artist’s longstanding critical engagement with narratives of mobility, emancipation and forms of control.