In 2013, after years trying to get permission from layer upon layer of authorities in India to put up an outdoor light work, the artist Shilpa Gupta finally got the OK — with the caveat that she take down the piece within 24 hours. That would have been impossible, but she signed the papers anyway, knowing that once the piece was up, it would take some time before anyone would come around to make her remove it.
“You just have to do your thing,” Gupta said in a video interview from her home in Bandra, a suburb of Mumbai. “You’re at the mercy of people’s whims and fancies, that’s just how the system is designed.”
20 October 2023
