Shilpa Gupta 100 Hand drawn Maps of Tel Aviv / Jerusalem, 2014 Carbon tracings on paper 30 x 22 inches Edition 4/6 Mumbai-based artist Shilpa Gupta addresses the weighty issues of religion, nationality, and history with wry humor. Using video, sculpture, photography, and sound, she distills critical observations into pithy reflections on conditions in South Asia. This testing of the border’s instability appears in 100 Hand Drawn Maps, components of a larger ongoing project. For these works, the artist travelled from India to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, inviting participants to draw maps from memory. Layering these drawings atop one another, she illustrates the mercurial nature of nation as idea and, as the work’s lines intersect and diverge, its ambivalent and logocentric status.
