Shilpa Gupta: One Palm Closer to the Sky: Fondazione Furla | GAM – Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Milan, Italy
For the eighth edition of the Furla Series programme, Fondazione Furla and GAM – Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Milan present One Palm Closer to the Sky, a solo exhibition by Shilpa Gupta, curated by Bruna Roccasalva.
One of the most influential voices in international contemporary art, Shilpa Gupta explores language, censorship, mobility and the structures that shape individual lives and freedom. Working across sculpture, light installations, video, sound, and performance, Gupta creates works that shift between territories and languages, and between singularity and collectivity, intimacy and public life, through works that couple conceptual rigour and accessibility.
“At GAM, Shilpa Gupta presents an exploration of borders, freedom, migration and the systems of control that shape our present,” explains Tommaso Sacchi, Councillor for Culture – City of Milan. “The project stems from the long-standing collaboration between the museum and Fondazione Furla and ties in with another significant presence of the artist in Milan: her work at ArtLine, the open-air contemporary art museum in CityLife Park, with a piece dedicated to freedom of speech and censorship. Together, these two projects reaffirm Milan’s commitment to making contemporary art a space for dialogue and reflection on the defining issues of our time.”
“One of the aspects that makes Shilpa Gupta’s work so powerful and relevant today is in fact her remarkable ability to use an accessible vocabulary without ever simplifying the complexity of the issues she addresses,” says Bruna Roccasalva, curator of the exhibition and Artistic Director of Fondazione Furla. “Gupta often starts out with something very simple and familiar – a word, an object, a gesture – and introduces subtle shifts that prompt us to ask questions, challenging what we take for granted or thought we knew. This accessibility also stems from her openness towards engaging with visitors, who are often invited to interact with the work, moving beyond the role of passive spectators to actively participate in shaping the meaning of the work itself.”
One Palm Closer to The Sky presents a series of new productions that explores the pivotal themes of Gupta’s work: her interest in language and text, the active involvement of spectators, the reworking of everyday objects and the capacity to create short-circuits between art and life, partly through interventions that move out of institutional spaces only to take root in the public sphere.
The project forms part of the artist’s broader exploration of the relationship between the individual and the systems of control that shape their existence, and of the way in which the media, language and institutions shape our perception of ourselves and the world. Within this exploration, One PalmCloser to The Sky focuses in particular on that sense of hope which, after generations of struggles for freedom, continues to endure, even as it appears today to be faltering in the face of the growing rise of authoritarian tendencies on a global scale.
Through the work of Shilpa Gupta, who critically examines narratives of identity, belonging and boundary, the GAM’s nineteenth-century collection – a testament to a historical period in which these concepts took shape – re-engages with the tensions of the present.
With an exhibition itinerary that sets out from the museum courtyard with the site-specific work HOPE (2026) and unfolds across the five ground-floor galleries through a variety of works ranging from the illuminated sign Truth (2026) to the iconic split-flap display SoundOnMySkin (2024/2025), from the sound installation When the Stone Sang to the Glass (Bella Ciao) (2025/2026) to the participatory installation Breathe (2024/2026), the exhibition offers an overview of Shilpa Gupta’s practice, highlighting her ability to transform research into experience and to make art a tool for inquiry and critical reflection, capable of opening up spaces for listening, imagination and dialogue.
One Palm Closer to the Sky by Shilpa Gupta forms part of the long-standing partnership between Fondazione Furla and GAM – Galleria d’Arte Moderna, which since 2021 has presented a new annual exhibition project, aimed at creating dialogue between contemporary art and the gallery’s historic spaces and permanent collection.
The Furla Series is the project through which, since 2017, Fondazione Furla has organised exhibitions in partnership with leading Italian art institutions, with an all-female programme designed to celebrate and promote the contributions of women artists to contemporary culture.
Photo by Andrea Rossetti
