The buzz in Berlin right now is around Indian media artist Shilpa Gupta’s first exhibition(s) in Germany, with concurrent shows opening tonight at two local galleries. BodhiBerlin, the recently-opened, first European branch of the contemporary Indian art gallery Bodhi Art (which also has spaces in Mumbai, Singapore and New York), and Galerie Volker Diehl (which recently opened a Russian outpost) have consciously bridged Berlin’s urban divide to “allow both Berliners and an international audience further access to [Gupta’s] particular use of regional and political geography in which she tackles issues that include notions of borders within and in-between media, religion and nations,” according to the press release.
BlindStars StarsBlind, as the exhibitions are titled, will incorporate Gupta’s signature interactive mediums, as well as more static works such as photography, all dealing with topical political issues concerning widespread terror tactics and suppression, as inflicted by both external and internal societal factions and through international media platforms. Her critique of man-made boundaries erected through geopolitics and religious fundamentalism is a particularly loaded concept for this unusual collaboration between BodhiBerlin and Volker Diehl, the latter being the first Western art dealer to establish a gallery in Moscow, appropriately titled Diehl + Gallery One, which opened in April with an exhibition by Art21 Season 4 artist Jenny Holzer that closes tomorrow.
BlindStars StarsBlind runs through August 2nd at both Galerie Volker Diehl and BodhiBerlin. For more information about Shilpa Gupta’s exhibition and accompanying monograph, click here. Schoenes Wochenende.