Lines will guide you home: Parul Gupta on her journey from geometry to art

In 2014, artist Parul Gupta had a solo exhibition, titled Space Phrases, at Mumbai’s Lakeeren Gallery. The line drawings forming delicate, sequential grid-like patterns instantly drew comparisons with modernist Nasreen Mohammedi. Flattered as she was, Gupta wanted to find a voice of her own. “Getting compared to a legend is an honour, but it comes with its own pressure. Also, I didn’t want to get boxed by the parallels,” she says. 

Also read: Art smart: Haryana school provides canvas of learning with traditional model

Nearly a decade later, she has not only managed to create a unique artistic language but has also received the stamp of vindication. Last month, she bagged the Sovereign Asian Art Prize 2023, Asia’s longest-established and most prestigious award for contemporary art. Gupta beat 30 shortlisted artists from the region to win the USD 30,000 prize. The winning work was ‘Notes on Movement-Layer #115’. 

Part of an active series of the same name, the 2022 ink-on-paper work is created by layering the same set of lines, but with slightly altered alignments to give the impression of a vibration. Gupta, thus, manages to create movement on a static surface. 

“I am interested in movement in architecture, and before I began the series in 2018, I had been observing dancers and how there is a blurry shadow that follows them around… almost as if the same person is multiplied. That is when I started using lines in a way that gave a translucent––not opaque, not transparent–– effect,” she says, adding, “The winning work uses four layers. Until then, I had only been using three.”  

Noida-based Gupta is not from an art background. Her interest in geometry can be attributed to studying mathematics in college. 

“No one in my family was inclined towards art. But I was searching for what I wanted to do by using the process of elimination. I knew I did not fit into a 9-to-5 job. Eventually, I figured I wanted to do something creative that I could continue till the end of my life. And, one day, I saw a Tanjore painting and thought, ‘I could do it’. I was 22 at the time,” the 43-year-old recalls. 

Gupta started her journey as an artist at Delhi’s Triveni Kala Sangam, where she trained under stalwarts such as Rameshwar Broota and Sanjoy Roy, but her keen interest in drawing, particularly architectural, left her looking for more. Some soul-searching, a lot of research and a divorce later, she went for Masters in the UK’s Nottingham Trent University. “In the courses that I did before, it was always about painting. During my Masters, I learnt that a drawing in itself was complete. When the layer of colour vanished, I realised all I was left with was straight lines,” she says. 

It was her degree show in 2011 at the university that lent her the clarity she was seeking in her practice. The site-specific installation featured patterns of straight lines drawn on a white wall, alongside strands of loose hair. The delicacy of both compelled viewers to come closer to observe better and move further away to see the work as a whole. 

“That’s when I asked myself, ‘What if they could move into the drawing and feel the tactile quality of lines?’ The question remained with me until 2016, when I made my first ‘drawing in space’,” she says. 
Playing with perception, therefore, is a key element that makes Gupta’s works so stimulating. The technical term for it is parallax, which she says she discovered not so long ago. She is not the first artist to blur the boundaries between art and architecture, but the preemptive nature of her works that seem to be aware of its viewers’ movements is captivating. “My work is around viewers and altering perception. As they move, the architecture shifts. 

I tweak their cognition in a way that forces them to engage with the work,” she says. A similar iridescent effect is rendered by her ‘drawing sculptures’ and the site-specific 3D ‘drawings in space’ that play with the lustre of material (matte and gloss) and depth (using threads and needles), respectively.

Also read: Capturing crisis: A riveting exhibition of photohraphers' perspectives of the Sri Lankan crisis

A recent exploration that Gupta has added to her practice is kinetics, where the viewer is still, but the work is in motion. An example would be ‘Notes on Movement-#113’, which was part of Nature Morte’s group show, Infinite Reminders, in 2022.

Comprising five white panels with line clusters of different densities in red and black, it shows the same coloured fields aligning over a period of time. “I want my viewers to not just look at the works for the visual experience. I want them to wait… wait till it becomes something else,” says the artist, who has a series of solo and group shows lined up through the year.