Important Notice

Subodh Gupta's oeuvre draws much of its inspiration from India's recent socio-economic flux, and the new migrations of goods, services, and people it has generated. In his canvases, sculptures and multimedia works, the artist meditates on both the desirable and adverse dimensions of globalization, and particularly on the effects it has had on India's mushrooming ‘upper-middle-class'. In his series of works titled Saat Samundra Par, literally... Subodh Gupta's oeuvre draws much of its inspiration from India's recent socio-economic flux, and the new migrations of goods, services, and people it has generated. In his canvases, sculptures and multimedia works, the artist meditates on both the desirable and adverse dimensions of globalization, and particularly on the effects it has had on India's mushrooming ‘upper-middle-class'. In his series of works titled Saat Samundra Par, literally meaning ‘across the seven seas', Gupta uses this local lens to interrogate the universality of themes like labour and migration, departures and homecomings, dreams and reality. Similar to his works that employ images of shiny steel kitchenware or that are built of cow dung patties, this series highlights the great ambitions and unique patterns of growth of India's upwardly mobile middle class.

In the present lot, a tightly bound bundle, a briefcase and two stuffed bags, on their way to or from an airport perched atop one of north India's ubiquitous Ambassador taxis, represent the large body of Indian labourers who work abroad, particularly in the Middle East, to support their families at home. Their jobs as construction workers, tailors, cooks and nannies are not easy, and to fulfill their aspirations of a better life for their families, they must silently bear the weight of their loneliness and the unforgiving conditions of their jobs. It is their physical mobility that enables the social mobility of their family and class and, consequently, contributes to the rapid economic growth of the country.

These labourers leave with hope and anticipation, like their possessions, straining against the ropes that bind their bulging luggage, and return, eventually, with a sense of pride and a hard-won collection of consumer goods that symbolize the new social standing that their families can now inhabit. As the artist explains, “They really work hard there and after six months or a year, they come home. Whatever they dream of and can afford, they bring back in these enormous packed rolls (ghataris). Their baggage represents the pride of going abroad and taking money and foreign goods back to their families, but it also means sharing rooms with twelve other Indians in overcrowded conditions without their families; often the underpaid underbelly of the rich growth that defines the modern metropolis” (as quoted in Fabrice Bousteau, ed., Made by Indians, Galerie Enrico Navarra, Paris, 2007, p. 451).

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