Garima Gupta

This Foundation Project implemented by IFA under Explorations will experiment with the making of an artist book in the form of a dragon-scale scroll, containing the micro-narratives of the Mahakali River, as a site of spirituality, and cross-border trade. Garima Gupta is the Coordinator for this project. 

Garima Gupta is a Delhi-based contemporary artist. She is a graduate of Communication Design, from the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. Garima was a Visiting Artist Fellow at the Mittal Institute, Harvard University in 2023. She has participated in many exhibitions in India and abroad, including solo shows at Clark House Initiative, Mumbai, TARQ Mumbai, and group shows in Bikaner House Delhi, Dhaka Art Summit, Para Site Hong Kong, TS1 Yangon, Myanmar, Museum of Modern Art, Poland, Kunsthall Trondheim, Norway, among others. She has been to many artist residencies including Tentacles Arts Space Bangkok, and the School of Visual Arts, New York. She was a nominated artist for the Signature Art Prize 2018, Singapore Art Museum. Given her experience, Garima Gupta is best placed to be the Project Coordinator of this Foundation Project of IFA.

This project will experiment with the making of an artist book in the form of a dragon-scale scroll, as a way to hold space for micro-narratives of the Mahakali River. The whip-furl motion of the dragon-scale scroll when it is first opened mirrors the movement of a water wave. The life of the river conflates the spiritual imagination of the people around it as well as certain economic functions, such as hydroelectric projects and trade crossover routes. The Project Coordinator will employ the narrative strategies of ‘critical fabulation’ (coined by cultural historian Saidiya Hartman) that responds to the limits of archives and invoke history’s omissions, by telling an impossible story and amplifying the impossibility of its telling. The explorations in the form of the artist book will involve playing around with the asymmetrical forms of the scroll, experiments with bifurcation of the scroll and the narration, and creating satellite scrolls and narratives that may come together to build a landscape of multiple stories. 

The outcome of the project will be an artist book experimenting with the form of a dragon-scale scroll. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA with the final report will be the soft copy of the artist book, and photographs of the artistic process.    

This project suitably addresses the framework of IFA’s Arts Practice programme in the manner in which it attempts to investigate the life of a river in the age of climate crisis, through micro-narratives of water, in the form of an artist book that will mirror water movements, where the water becomes an unfathomable conduit of impossible stories brought to the surface through ‘critical fabulation.’

IFA will ensure that the implementation of this project happens in a timely manner and funds expended are accounted for. IFA will also review the progress of the project at midterm by convening an online gathering of artists coordinating Explorations projects. After the project is finished and all deliverables are submitted, IFA will put together a Final Evaluation to share with Trustees.

This project is made possible with support from Sony Pictures Entertainment Fund.