Catalogue / Aakansha Gupta
See it on a wall
Shown at true size: 17 × 46 cm. The person is about 170 cm tall. Every work is shown whole, never cropped.
Aakansha Gupta
Raft of hope
Help came late. A door frame carried them through the water
Green light climbs through the glass from underneath.
The water has stopped moving but it still looks cold.
A child sits on a door that has become a floor.
One knee up. Hands holding on to almost nothing.
No shore at any edge.
Only the paddle, lying where a person might have been.
The work
Raft of hope begins with a flood in Kishanganj, Bihar, when Aakansha Gupta is a child. Help does not come in time. Neighbours use a wooden door frame as a raft and carry her family to safety. Here a ceramic child sits on a wooden raft. Under it lies a sheet of rippled glass, lit from below. Gupta first makes a second figure, the neighbour, but the piece feels too crowded. She takes him out and puts in a wooden paddle. She keeps the glass clear, not muddy.
In the artist’s words
“The piece felt too crowded. The oars say something a person could not. On the raft, all I felt was a complete, terrifying emptiness and an endless expanse of water. Where the high-fired clay offers rigid durability, the glass introduces vulnerability and fractured transparency, mimicking the unpredictable nature of water.”
Not for sale
Shown with the artist’s permission. This work is not for sale.
- Theme
- Surviving a childhood flood
- Material
- Ceramic, glass, commercial light and wood
- Size
- 17 × 45.72 × 60.96 cm
- Year
- 2025
- About the artist
- Visva Bharati University
- From
- KISHANGANJ
- Code
- RC-8530
- @aakanshha7
