LÜBECK.- Shilpa Gupta (b. 1976, Mumbai) will receive the Possehl Prize for International Art 2025. To mark the award, which comes with prize money of 25,000 EUR, the Kunsthalle St. Annen is hosting the artist’s first museum exhibition in Germany. we last met in the mirror brings together some 25 works created over two decades and includes installations, sculptures, audio and video works, drawings and textile pieces.

"The exhibition examines the multiplicity of knowledge and the ways in which meaning is ascribed, and questions the boundaries of unambiguous definitions in a fluid, permanently shifting world in which we live", explains Shilpa Gupta.

In her art Gupta deals with such subjects as censorship, state authority, social and political power structures, and collective responsibility. The starting point for her artistic reflection is often Mumbai, where she is based. This megacity is a microcosm of social inequality, post-colonial fractures and global economic dynamics. The artist fuses local observations with universal questions and so connects people across cultural and geographic borders.

"With the award of the Possehl Prize for International Art we are honouring Shilpa Gupta for her sensitive, often socio-political works and the great variety of forms of expressions in her overall body of work. Her art is of global signifiance and can now be seen and experienced in Lübeck. Our aim is to build bridges from Lübeck out into the world", says Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Sandberger, Chair of the Possehl Foundation.

Boundary experiences and the power of language

Borders – geographic, ideological, social – are the thread that runs through the exhibition. In the neon installation 2652 Gupta counts the steps between the Wailing Wall, the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. The border between India and Pakistan is represented by 1:14.9 (2011/12), a sculpture consisting of a thread wound into a ball. The flexible material evokes the fissures of the landscape and stands in contrast to the rigid borders on official maps. Her work Stars on Flags of the World (2012/23) exists of hundreds of wax stars, taken from the flags of recognised and unrecognised states. Visitors are invited to take a star away with them, so the work changes continuously and defined affiliations are dissolved.

Shilpa Gupta’s art confronts censorship with the power of words; spoken, written and sung. In Spoken Poem in a Bottle (2018) she has gathered texts by banned writers dating from different centuries. Another room in the Kunsthalle is filled with the sounds of songs: In the pervasive sound installation, Listening Air (2019-2024), Gupta has collected protest songs to form an acoustic archive of revolt and solidarity.

Reflections on diversity and belonging

In her sound work I have many dreams (2007-2008) Gupta gives a voice to young girls who recount their dreams, demonstrating the universality of adolescent hopes. The light installation, I live under your sky too (2004) is another manifesto for plurality – the sentence shines out in Mumbai’s most spoken languages, Hindi, Urdu and English, and makes this juxtaposition of languages and identities tangible.

"In her art, Shilpa Gupta suceeds in translating globally relevant questions into a universal language", says Noura Dirani, Director of the Kunsthalle St. Annen. "Her works open up spaces for dialogue and connect people in different locations, enabling them to see their own history through ohter's eyes."

The exhibition will be accompanied by a wide-ranging programme of activities.

A catalogue to accompany the exhibition will be published by Hatje Cantz.