A Stainless Steel Family Portrait: Subodh Gupta's reminiscence of a simpler life

The use of utensil racks for a family portrait highlights the importance of food and the kitchen in the artist's life, in reminding him of his family and his cultural identity.

Subodh Gupta’s My Family Portrait (2013) is a mixed media installation, part of his retrospective ‘Everything Is Inside’ exhibited at Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt, Germany in 2014. The work comprises 3 steel utensil racks, each sourced from one of Gupta’s siblings. The racks contain several items that are a common sight in Indian households, specifically middle class family kitchens. These include pots, pans, steel plates and bowls, plastic containers, strainers, graters, cutlery, a few ceramic mugs, and a plastic basket. All items crucial for the fast paced and chaotic environment that is an Indian kitchen. These items are also niche to Indian culture and its way of life; the small sized pot perfect for boiling just the right amount of milk to make chai, complemented by the tiny mugs that fit a perfect serving of it. 

The racks themselves are square and have thick borders— similar to the frames of images— and are hung in a way that emulates family portraits hung in houses, hence the name. The title helps us read the work in a particular context and understand it as an ode to the artist’s family and his country. Without the title it would look like a replication of any other Indian kitchen and could be read in a different way. The tradition of hanging family portraits in one's house to showcase loved ones, though a common practice in the West, is not widely used in India. Most middle and lower class families often cannot afford the luxury of a permanent residence to hang these frames nor the ability to have a picture taken and framed. The use of utensil racks for a family portrait highlights the importance of food and the kitchen in the artist's life, in reminding him of his family and his cultural identity.

The composition is filled with vertical lines created by the different shelves within the racks, and again by the plates, bowls and spoons hung to dry. There are also horizontal lines  created by storage units for larger items such as bowls and boxes. The combination of horizontal and vertical lines convey a sense of stability and solidity, as rectilinear forms with 90-degree angles are structurally stable; this stability suggests permanence and reliability. Though the work consists of items geometric in nature such as plates and bowls, they are positioned in varying angles creating organic shapes within the composition. The chaos created by these shapes is akin to the chaos in getting a large Indian family in the same place at the same time. As if each utensil was a family member getting ready for a family portrait scrambling to come together in time for the shot. The work is predominantly made of steel and plastic. The texture of steel is smooth and the surface is reflective. The plastic components add a bit of colour to break the monotony of silver coloured stainless steel. The utensils themselves are visibly used and have some wear and tear to them. The discolouration and indents on the utensils show that these objects have lived a life before being exhibited in neat and poised positions— they have been vessels to produce amazing, aromatic, flavourful food. 

Many have termed Gupta’s work as duchampian or surrealist due to his use of found objects, and he is known as the ‘Damien Hirst of Delhi’. Going more into depth about his duchampian label Gupta clarifies that although he has immense respect for the artist and has created works as an homage to him, he doesn’t care about the ready-made concept of Duchamp. He says:

“I use what interests me, what is mine, what fits into my way of thinking and art making. Those simple kitchen utensils are a visual paradox of the shiny attractive appearance on the surface and the emptiness inside; they show in a very accessible way the extremities of our time: the nothingness and the exuberance, and on a concrete level, the lack of the most essential ingredient of our life—food and the striking accumulation of hollow expressions of any kind.”

Stainless steel is a recurring material in Gupta’s oeuvre that surrounds his Indian identity, one that marks the country’s upward rise to becoming more economically developed. His obsession with steel utensils started in his childhood, when his sister found a scheme to trade their brass utensils for stainless steel ones. The Gupta family was no longer eating out of dull brass thalis (plates) they used till then, instead they now had shiny silver plates to eat out of. Twenty years later when reflecting on the lack of lustre in his work, he remembered the shiny metal of his childhood. “In utensils, kitchens and food, I find the universe,” says Gupta of his work, adding that he was inspired by Steven Hawking. “The whole solution is not up there; it’s in this Earth,” he says, “you can find all solutions in this planet only; in my theory, you can find all your solutions in your plate.”

The overarching theme in all of his works is the reminder of India’s roots in agricultural and pastoral practices. The artist fears that in growing more economically developed, with machines and technology replacing many labour intensive jobs, Indians will leave behind their culture. Stainless steel stands as a symbol for the culture and tradition of India, it is found in every single household no matter how rich or poor, educated or uneducated, privileged or unprivileged. 

Through the mid-1990s Gupta was driven by the idea of representing the 'small-town Indian reality' in the fancy globalized urban environment of the contemporary art scene. He did this through his paintings, installations, videos and performances. Having done street theatre as a child and dabbled in an acting career the artist has mastered an acute sense for the dramatic, and uses the motif of utensils in all his works with varying degrees of dramatization—whether it be as grand as U.F.O, as political as Line of Control, as abstract as Hamid Ka Chimta or as colloquial as My Family Portrait. 

I chose to cover My Family Portrait in today's essay due to its simplicity. It resonates with me in a way that none of Gupta’s other works do. The other works are grand and draw attention to create a statement, whereas My Family Portrait does the same quietly. Not apologetically nor demurely, just without the extra noise. 

In a way, I do agree with those that term his work as duchampian; the same steel rack in the kitchen would not prompt so much thought and insight about the growing economy and forgotten culture of India, as it does hung in a gallery. It is through the choice of the artist, that this otherwise ordinary object has been termed as art. This also opens up conversation surrounding gallery culture and the difference between the object in the context of its origin and within the four white walls of a gallery. Would millions of middle and lower class families be able to claim that they have a Subodh Gupta piece sourced directly from their kitchens?

The interpretations of this work with it's allusion to traditional family portraits are never ending. So many of these interpretations are limited by ones cultural and ethnic background, and I imagine that those from a South Asian heritage would be able to pick up the nuanced subtleties of cultural allusion. For instance, the hanging spoons and strainers create circular forms at the bottom of each rack, which juxtapose the vertical forms created at the top of the rack. Circles are usually used in compositions as focal points, with all other elements receiving attention after the eye has acknowledged (and greeted) the circle. When posing for pictures, or even while seated at events such as funerals or weddings, Indian families have the elders seated at the front row, with each row after this decreasing in age. The idea is that when the guests come to pay their respects at a funeral or to congratulate at a wedding, they greet the oldest members of the family first as a sign of respect. When I saw My Family Portrait for the first time I immediately visualized the racks as rows of seating, the circles as the most respected/ eldest members of the family and the rest of the utensils that create rectangular forms (plates dried sideways, boxes stacked on eachother) as younger members. 

Moreover, those that have grown up living in India have a sense of belonging to the kitchen and all of it’s paraphernalia intrinsic to their identity. A dominant part of my Indian identity is my kitchen at home. Cooking with my mother, spending time labouring over peeling vegetables or even staring out my kitchen window people-watching as my mother yells at me to watch the gas. Doing kitchen chores without complaining— more as an opportunity to zone out while completing a mindless task or go deep into conversation with my mother— an activity that makes me feel as though I am outside the framework of time. Untouched by the ticking clock, and perhaps untouched by the expectation to part ways from this belonging. This same feeling, existing outside of time, is what comes over me when viewing a good exhibition or staring at an artwork I admire. Gupta’s My Family Portrait evokes the same meditative feeling in me every time I look at it. And in this sense I appreciate his attempt at reminding viewers of India’s cultural roots in agricultural practices— being inherently linked to food-making and the community building that surrounds it. 

Citations

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