The MMFA acquires a Shilpa Gupta
The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) has acquired a major work by Shilpa Gupta, an artist currently featured in the Venice Biennale, where she is appearing in the exhibition May You Live in Interesting Times curated by Ralph Rugoff. The installation For, in your tongue, I cannot fit: 100 jailed poets is the first work by this internationally famous Indian artist to enter a public collection in Canada.
Gupta’s multi-disciplinary oeuvre could not be more cutting-edge: she is preoccupied with the political social space, most notably with notions of boundaries and censorship, and the power of walls, including walls of words. This acquisition was made possible thanks to funding raised by the first edition of W. Bruce C. Bailey’s Fête Champêtre in 2018.
Shilpa Gupta (born in 1976), For, in Your Tongue, I Cannot Fit: 100 Jailed Poets, 2017-2018, 100 books cast in gun metal, table. MMFA, purchase, W. Bruce C. Bailey Fête-champêtre Fund. Installation view at YARAT Contemporary Art Space, Baku – solo show by Shilpa Gupta For, in Your Tongue, I Cannot Fit, 2018. Courtesy the artist and Galleria Continua, San Gimignano
