Shilpa Gupta: What Still Holds: Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, Berlin
The starting point of Shilpa Gupta's solo exhibition at Hamburger Bahnhof is the monumental work Truth, situated at the intersection of language, power, and control. As visitors move between the oversized letters within the exhibition space, the artwork questions the mechanisms that preserve or obscure truth. The exhibition reveals how collective progress depends on protecting and interrogating truth and asks what endures under systems that restrict freedom of speech or access to information. Complemented by additional works from the last 20 years, Gupta's exhibition is presented in dialogue with the museum's display of works by Joseph Beuys. This parallel presentation highlights similarities in their approaches to language, participation, and social reflection. As part of the anniversary programme celebrating 30 years of Hamburger Bahnhof, the exhibition explores the search for truth and emphasizes the role of art as a medium of reflection that encourages questioning structures of power, asking critical questions, and developing an independent perspective.
What Still Holds brings together eleven works by Shilpa Gupta from the last twenty years that explore language, power, borders, and collective memory. Across sculpture, sound installations, drawing, and participatory works, she examines how information is shaped, restricted, or erased. Visitors move between fragmented letters of the large-scale installation Truth (2022-25), trace missing figures in the participatory work Untitled (Nothing Will Go on Record) (2014/25), listen to resistance songs in the sound installation Listening Air (2019/23), and encounter voices that were censored or concealed. Maps drawn from memory in the series 100 Hand Drawn Maps of My Country (2008/14–ongoing) question national borders. The metallic library Someone Else: A Library of 100 Books Written Anonymously or Under Pseudonyms (2011) brings together books released under pseudonyms due to various reasons including fear of political persecution or discrimination.
Produced for the exhibition is a marble sculpture from the series Don’t See, Don’t Hear, Don’t Speak (2006/26). Several hands extend from a single body, reaching toward the eyes, ears, and mouth, overlapping and obstructing the senses. Gupta refers to the motif of the three wise monkeys, which embodies the principle "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil," originating from a 17th-century carving at a Buddhist temple in Japan. It was made popular in India via the teachings of the Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) and commonly featured in schoolbooks. The exhibition concludes with the motion installation StillTheyKnowNotWhatIDream (2021), made of two mechanical flapboards. Such boards were once used in airports and train stations to announce departures and arrivals. The boards display short reflections by the artist and flip continuously, causing words to appear and disappear in a steady rhythm. The work shows how information moves unevenly and how understanding depends on context and belief, asking what still holds when messages flicker, shift, and remain incomplete.
Shilpa Gupta (born 1976 in Mumbai, India) lives and works in Mumbai. Gupta’s multidisciplinary practice, encompassing installation, video, sculpture, and performance, engages with the social structure of society as well as with shared histories and their sociopolitical consequences. Her installations often explore how information and emotion are conveyed through the written, spoken or sung word and how these are shared or systematically suppressed. Gupta´s selected solo exhibitions include: Centro Botín, Santander (2024); Amant, New York (2023); MAXXI L'Aquila (2023); M HKA, Antwerp (2021); Dallas Contemporary, Dallas (2021); Barbican Centre, London (2021); Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati (2010). She received the Possehl Prize for International Art 2025.
Images:
Shilpa Gupta. What Still Holds, Ausstellungsansicht / exhibition view
Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, Berlin, 2026.
Photo by Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie / Luca Girardini
