In the ‘Shadow’ series, the shadows of viewers, caught by the camera, encounters projected shadows on the white screen; shadows of objects and dolls, as if dropping out of the sky, are stopped by the visitors’ shadows.
The first version of Shadow (2006), mingles spectators’ shadows with those of other figures walking, dancing, and jumping, while in the second version (2006), it is shadows and houses and bird silhouettes that seem to be falling and crossing space before becoming attached to visitors’ shadows. In this third version, the objects are not clearly identifiable because the changes of scale give free rein to the imagination.
This interactive installation involves spectators both individually – causing them to move about in space – and collectively, allowing them to swap between themselves the objects that are clinging to their shadows. At the end of the cycle, the shadow theatre makes the visitors vanish, drowned in a sea of objects. To produce these interactive installations, Shilpa Gupta enlisted the help of a computer programmer and a sound designer. Her work is a team effort, just as the making of any film is.
In a more playful vein, Shilpa Gupta developed a metaphor around memory and body, with falling objects symbolising an irreversible past that ‘clings to the skin’, as suggested by the sound and the words uttered at the end of each cycle: ‘His dead, our dead, your dead, our dead, her dead, Is the land not well marked? Is the sky not able to hide and drink it?’ The artist’s idea is more serious than might appear at first glance. Playing on the fascination for appearances and technology, she rallies against the paradoxes of our societies. How do we react, when we look at the images? How does media propaganda modify the way we behave?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYQ-ysDGZUo
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