10.2.09

SUNIL GUPTA

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Sunil Gupta (Ινδία)
Exiles - 1986
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Sunil Gupta
Photographer

Sunil Gupta was born in Delhi, India, in 1953. Growing up watching Bollywood films in all their glorious colour, he later moved to Canada with his family, where his growing interest in photography was fuelled by Montreal art cinema. Sunil currently lives in London, and has worked as a video maker, photographer, curator, writer, administrator and academic.

Creating photographic images since the mid 1970’s, when he first studied photography at the New School in New York City, Sunil then progressed to a series of exhibitions that toured worldwide. He has now become one of the UK’s foremost photographers and artists. “Sunil Gupta stands at the forefront of that creative, migrant generation which first exploded on the visual art scene in the UK in the 1980’s” says critic Stuart Hall of Sunil’s meteoric rise.

In 1983, Sunil studied for an MA at the Royal College of Art in London. The 1980’s were a decade when artists were liberal in their portrayal of the personal self. No boundaries on the study of nationality, race or ‘who slept with who’ endured. Issues like capitalism, colour, even religion were not left unstirred. Thoughts transpired into action and action into change. It was during this decade Sunil was involved in the founding of Autograph, the Association of Black Photographers.

In the 1990’s, the progressive perspective on identity politics was in fear of losing its influence to commercialism, although never being more important. Within this context, Sunil’s work is a monument to free expression. “I have engaged with a kind of cultural politics deliberately,” he says, “highlighting issues of race, gender and sexuality.”

In 1995, Sunil was diagnosed HIV Positive. He has since passionately worked on and written about the issue, at times taking on a campaigning role. “I didn't want to become an 'AIDS artist' or single-issue artist, but something needed to be done about it,” Sunil says, “I aspired to raise debate and to be quite activist and not just aesthetic”'.

‘A World Without Pity’ (2003), a video documentary about Sunil, chronicles the history and current treatment of HIV/AIDS. This journey though his intercultural and geographical identities proclaims his status as a gay man carrying the HIV virus. It betrays the devastation the virus causes to personal and international relations as it travels across the world. "HIV has a look," he explains, "my presence in the landscape is ambivalent, since I am a carrier."

The centrepiece of Sunil’s current show is ‘Homelands’, a series of 15 large-scale autobiographical photographs. They narrate the artist’s journey over the last five years, documenting his travels between the parallel worlds he calls home. He presents the images as oppositional pairs of east and west, and his work tells of a world that cannot be simply divided by borders or conveniently marked by identities.

Sunil Gupta’s future plans include the making of ‘The Love of It’, a digital film about his life and work being developed and directed by Shakila Taranum Maan, in collaboration with The Art Ministry. Details of the ‘The Love of It’ will be available on this site, as the project develops.

artministry.co.uk

09 Φεβρουαρίου, 2009 16:18

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