Shilpa Gupta
Bikaner House, Centre for Contemporary Art 
New Delhi

StillTheyKnowNotWhatIDream (2021), shown in Shilpa Gupta’s solo exhibition at the Bikaner House art center in New Delhi, featured several flap-display boards of the sort once ubiquitous in train stations and airports. The signs present words and phrases distilled, like poetry, from various thoughts penned by the midcareer artist over the years—for instance, “as we slowly nearly always / give in.” The works remind us of transit waiting zones, in-between spaces of commingled anxiety and rest. But they can also evoke harsh political realities: “Raid Histories / Erase Voices.” The letters clatter violently as they flip, drawing our eyes to the upcoming word. The term “facts” becomes “fcats” and “cannot” becomes “cnat”—intentional misspellings that nod to the frequent distortions and fabrications in daily discourse, both public and private.