The diversity of new media art in India added yet another feather to its cap with the official unveiling of Line of Control, a monumental steel sculpture by the country’s leading contemporary artist Subodh Gupta at the South Court Mall, Saket, on Friday. The sculpture — a public art installation — is shaped like a giant mushroom cloud with a base, symbolising the troubled borders and times we live in — and also redemption, said Subodh Gupta.
Described by critics as one of Gupta’s largest works, the installation was brought back to India from London by the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art. It measures 36 X 36 ft and weighs 20 tonnes.
“The Line of Control stereotypically brings to mind geo-political crisis but I have used it as a poetic metaphor to transgress and subvert the known meaning and wittily present a cloudburst of another kind — of prosperity, peace and harmony,” Gupta said.
It is made of stainless steel kitchen utensils and culinary equipment like plates, bowls, ladles, spoons, tiffin boxes, sieves and saucers. These objects have been the core of Gupta’s deviant art practise since 1989 when he first exhibited stainless steel sculptures. He said he had “first thought about the proposal in 2005 and started working on it in 2007-2006.” Gupta says the shining stainless steel utensils have many dimensions.
“I love cooking and I spend a lot of time in the kitchen. The stainless steel utensils are so shining and so bright — it symbolises the brightness and the emptiness of a shining India,” Gupta said.
Inaugurating the installation, Kiran Nadar, owner of the Kiran Nadar Museum, said: “I was overwhelmed by the installation when I first saw it at the Tate Triennale in London in 2009. Tate is a grandiose kind of building — very cutting-edge. It looked like a mushroom cloud invoking memories of Hiroshima and the nuclear bomb.”