Ishara Art Foundation supports public art commission by Shilpa Gupta

Ishara Art Foundation is pleased to support ‘Still They Know Not What I Dream’ by Shilpa Gupta, a light-text sculpture commissioned by Alserkal Arts Foundation. The work is set to launch during Alserkal Art Week, running from 13 to 20 April 2025, and forms part of a series of public art commissions curated by Fatoş Üstek under the theme ‘Between a Beach and a Slope’. The sculpture will be located at The Yard in Alserkal Avenue.

Exploring the nature of self within a world marked by inequity, control, and surveillance, ‘Still They

Know Not What I Dream’ presents its text in reverse, challenging viewers to rethink everyday spaces and movements. The work interrogates how language both represents and obscures human history and memory, exploring the power of symbols in shaping identity and collective memory.

The sculpture is presented in parallel with ‘Shilpa Gupta: Lines of Flight’, the artist’s first solo exhibition in West Asia, currently on view at the Ishara Art Foundation. 

Sabih Ahmed, Projects Advisor at Ishara and the curator of the exhibition, said: “Ishara is proud to support Shilpa Gupta’s 'Still They Know Not What I Dream’ presented by the Alserkal Arts Foundation. The work continues the artist’s play with language as a tool for control on the one hand, and a medium of resistance on the other. The sculpture extends the exhibition’s exploration of ‘poetic justice’ and how poets and writers navigate what can and cannot be spoken.”

‘Lines of Flight’, curated by Sabih Ahmed, features a diverse selection of artworks from 2006 to the present that include a new sound installation, site-specific interventions, sculptures, drawings, prints and videos, foregrounding Gupta’s longstanding critical engagement with narratives of mobility, control and acts of resilience. The exhibition includes artworks that regard poets and the ramifications of their poetry in the face of rising intolerance, such as ‘A Liquid, the Mouth Froze’, works from the ‘Untitled (Jailed Poet Drawings)’ series, and ‘Listening Air’.

Commenting on the rising popularity and momentum of South Asian art internationally, Smita

Prabhakar, Founder and Chairperson of the Ishara Art Foundation, said: “As a dedicated member

of the South Asian art community, I feel that art from the sub-continent is finding its rightful place. The magnitude of artworks both in scale and relevance offers not only a view into South Asia but to issues that are of importance to all of humanity.”

Speaking on Ishara’s role as a base for South Asian art in the diaspora, she added: “With the UAE

and especially Dubai serving as a hub and transit for international visitors both from the art community and beyond, Ishara is place where contemporary art practices from South Asia can find an international platform.”

‘Still They Know Not What I Dream’ is presented as part of ‘Between a Beach and a Slope’ curated by Fatoş Üstek alongside works by Nujoom Alghanem and Kirstine Roepstorff, commissioned by Alserkal Arts Foundation.

‘Shilpa Gupta: Lines of Flight’ at the Ishara Art Foundation runs until 31 May 2025. The exhibition

has been generously supported by Carl F. Bucherer, with insurance support from Emirates Insurance Company, and logistical support from Galleria Continua, neugerriemschneider, and Vadehra Art Gallery

Shilpa Gupta (b.1976) lives and works in Mumbai, India where she has studied sculpture at the Sir

J. J. School of Fine Arts from 1992 to 1997.

She has had solo shows at the Contemporary Arts Centre in Cincinnati, Arnolfini in Bristol, OK in

Linz, Museum Arnhem, Voorlinden Museum and Gardens in Wassenaar, KIOSK in Ghent, Barbican

in London, Dallas Contemporary and the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein in Berlin, Bielefelder

Kunstverein, La synagogue de Delme Contemporary Art Centre and Lalit Kala Akademi in NewDelhi. In 2021 she had a survey show at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp curated by Nav Haq. She presented a solo project at ‘My East is Your West’, a two-person joint India-Pakistan exhibition, by the Gujral Foundation in Venice in 2015.

Gupta’s work has been shown in leading international institutions and museums such as Tate

Modern, Museum of Modern Art, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Centre Pompidou, Serpentine

Galleries, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Mori Art Museum, Solomon R. Guggenheim

Museum, ZKM, Ishara Art Foundation, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art and Devi Art Foundation.

Shilpa Gupta has participated in 58th Venice Biennale (2019) curated by Ralph Rugoff, Kochi

Muziris Biennale (2018) curated by Anita Dube, Göteborg Biennial (2017) curated by Nav Haq,

Berlin Biennale (2014) curated by Juan Gaitán, New Museum Triennial (2009), Sharjah Biennial

curated by Yuko Hasegawa (2013), Lyon Biennale curated by Hou Hanru (2009), Gwangju Biennale

directed by Okwui Enwezor and curated by Ranjit Hoskote (2008), Yokohama Triennale curated by

Hans Ulrich Obrist (2008) and Liverpool Biennial curated by Gerardo Mosquera and Manray Hsu

(2006).

Her work is in the collections of the Tate, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Centre Pompidou,

Mori Art Museum, M+ Museum, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Contemporary Art

Chicago, Deutsche Bank, Daimler Chrysler, Louis Vuitton Foundation, ZKM, Astrup Fearnley

Museum of Modern Art, Fonds national d’art contemporain, Fonds régionaux d’art contemporain,

KOC Collection, National Gallery of Victoria, National Gallery of Canada, Museum Voorlinden, Art Now, Cincinnati Art Museum, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, Art Jameel, Devi Art Foundation, and the Ishara Art Foundation and the Prabhakar Collection, among others.

Ishara Art Foundation

Ishara Art Foundation was founded in 2019 as a non-profit organisation dedicated to presenting contemporary art of South Asia. Located in Dubai, the Foundation supports emerging and established practices that advance critical dialogue and explore global interconnections.

Guided by a research-led approach, Ishara realises its mission through exhibitions, onsite and online programmes, education initiatives and collaborations in the UAE and internationally. The Foundation facilitates exchange between South Asian and international artistic networks that include museums, foundations, institutions, galleries and individuals.

The Ishara logo, a synthesis of a square and circle, is based on an ideogram by Zarina to convey the word آسمان’) Aasman’), sky. It forms one of 36 images from ‘Home is a Foreign Place’ (1999), a work in the collection of Ishara’s Founder and Chairperson, Smita Prabhakar. Ishara signifies a gesture, a signal or a hint, and is a word common to several languages including Arabic, Persian, Hindi, Bengali, Swahili and Urdu.

Ishara Art Foundation is presented in partnership with Alserkal.

Website: www.ishara.org