Important Notice

“...what is very exciting to me about stainless steel… is that despite having worked with it for so many years, I still find something new about it every time—a different aspect to play with.”
- SUBODH GUPTA

Subodh Gupta came to stainless steel as a medium while in the kitchen. He has said of the epiphany, “One day, while I was standing in the kitchen, I was looking at this rack, with stainless steel utensils ? plates and cups.... “...what is very exciting to me about stainless steel… is that despite having worked with it for so many years, I still find something new about it every time—a different aspect to play with.”
- SUBODH GUPTA

Subodh Gupta came to stainless steel as a medium while in the kitchen. He has said of the epiphany, “One day, while I was standing in the kitchen, I was looking at this rack, with stainless steel utensils ? plates and cups. I kept looking at it and I was thinking, what am I going to do with this material… and suddenly I saw it in front of me and that was it.” (The artist as quoted by Sania Galundia, “Steel Utensils: The Signature Medium of Subodh Gupta”, Critical Collective, online) Gupta, who considers the kitchen a sacred space and spends a lot of time there as a cook, is familiar with the history of stainless steel in India. Introduced to the country’s households as a relatively rare symbol of modernity, it slowly replaced traditional brass, earthen and other utensils. Eventually stainless steel ceased being a social marker for the middle classes to become a universal presence.

The present installation, a commonplace visual in India, is identical to many open-shelved utensil storage spaces seen in kitchens across the country. Gleaming steel utensils, as if freshly cleaned, used in the preparation and serving of daily meals are set out in an orderly manner. According to critics, the scrupulous organisation of the arrangement and brilliant reflectiveness of the material used would suggest an extravagant futurism to the Western eye, opening up an interpretive gap created by cultural differences. In a letter to the artist, curator and art critic Nicolas Bourriaud explicated this dichotomy, “In short, the material used in most of your work is a veritable conceptual trap that reveals a cultural gap. What appears luxurious in the West is part of the lexicon of insecurity over there: your work can be compared to a trader who transports material that is plentiful in one place and rare in another.” (Nicolas Bourriaud, “On Cultural Precarity: A letter to Subodh Gupta”, Subodh Gupta: Gandhi’s Three Monkeys, New York: Jack Shainman Gallery, 2008, p. 3)

Gupta uses the undeniable solidity of stainless steel to interrogate conceptual ideas associated with dietary habits in Indian culture. He has said, “All of my work, whether performance, installation, or painting, is about the physicality of the materials that I am using, as well as the conceptual context that I hope to explore by my use of those mate rials… As is the case for many artists, the core of my practice is about exploring abstract, unbound ideas through very tangible, definitive matter.” (The artist interviewed by Rajesh Punj, “The Universe in a Pot: A Conversation with Subodh Gupta”, Sculpture, 1 December 2016, online) The highly ritualised nature of dietary habits in an Indian household is undergirded by social mores and cultural habits formed over centuries and utensils form an indispensable part of practising them. Art critic S Kalidas highlights the metaphysical importance of traditional Indian utensil designs, “What is often overlooked is that in the Indian space these utensils have a secret, sacred life of their own. These objects - the baalti (bucket), the lotaa (squat pitcher), the kumbhaa, the kalasham or the gharaa (large pot-bellied pitcher), the pateela (pan), the thaali (plate) and the chimtaa (tongs) – are also signifiers of widespread cultural, mystical and religious practices in rural and urban middle class India even today.” (S Kalidas, “Of Capacities and Containment: Poetry and Politics in the Art of Subodh Gupta”, Subodh Gupta: Gandhi’s Three Monkeys, New York: Jack Shainman Gallery, 2008, p. 84) By bringing out the quintessential Indian utensil from its culinary sanctum to the public eye, Gupta asks us to dwell on the habits it enables us to cultivate unquestioned.

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