The Open Studio / Aakansha Gupta
Aakansha Gupta
Guang
A bird with a second neck rising from its back
Brown glaze pools like river water left standing in a room.
A bird lifts its hooked beak and does not fly.
Behind it a second neck climbs, scaled in tiny squares.
Spirals turn and turn, sharp at every corner.
Light slides off the shoulder and turns gold at the edges.
Something soft has been made to stay.
The work
Aakansha Gupta makes Guang in ceramic under a deep brown glaze. A bird's head with a curled crest sits at one end. At the other end a long neck rises to a small open mouth. Bands of square spirals run down the sides and around the base. A grid of small squares covers the neck like scales. A lid sits on its back. Gupta, of Visva Bharati University, grounds her work in a childhood flood in Kishanganj. She uses glaze to hold the weight of mud and silt.
In the artist’s words
“As an art historian, I am interested in materiality: how the physical properties of a medium dictate its meaning. I use high-fired ceramic clay to create stiff, permanent forms. The clay gives permanency to the impermanent. My glazes are not decorative. Their colours and surface textures embody the weight of mud, silt and emotional gravity.”
- Theme
- Memory held in clay
- Material
- Glazed ceramic
- Size
- 20.32 × 33.02 × 35.56 cm
- Year
- 2024
- Edition
- 1
- Framed
- No
- About the artist
- Visva Bharati University
- From
- KISHANGANJ
- Code
- RC-461
