Artwork: Shilpa Gupta, I Live Under Your Sky Too, 2004-ongoing, LED light installation
Having been born and raised in Mumbai, India, artist Shilpa Gupta has built her multi-disciplinary art practice around exploring diverse communities, languages, religions and beliefs. Gupta grew up attuned to the richness of her environment and the sensitivities that come from such differences, with her art often focusing on people on the fringes whose presence might be muted or isolated. In her LED light installation, I Live Under Your Sky Too (2004-ongoing), the title features as script in three languages, with English and Urdu being constant, while a third is included depending on where the installation is shown, such as the recent inclusion of Spanish for the exhibition in Centro Botín in Santander, Spain (2024). The different languages are lit up separately at intervals. The Urdu is significant for being the national language of Pakistan, as well as the official language of Kashmir, a region of northern India that is still in a territorial dispute between Pakistan and India. Perhaps this conflicted region illustrates the artworks intention, that no matter who we are, or where we live, we all live under the same sky.