He is one of the most renowned contemporary artists on the international scene. With work now exhibited in all four corners of the globe, Subodh Gupta was born in 1964 in Khagaul, a small town in Bihar, one of the poorest states in India. Before turning to the visual arts, Gupta, with a real passion for the movies, was an actor in street theatre.

Fascinated by objects from everyday life, reminding him of his childhood (steel tiffin lunch boxes, thali platters, milk pails etc.), Subodh Gupta hijacks and elevates them to attain the rank of monumental artworks. The metals of which they are made (aluminium, steel, bronze etc.), and the way in which they shine, which he finds mesmerising, have become his basic materials. With them, the artist thus explores the significance of these objects in the construction of the individual and collective identity. He once declared: ‘‘I appreciate the fact that they tell all about life. It is also a way of celebrating Marcel Duchamp and his readymades’’.

As well as being an artist, Subodh Gupta is a photographer, sculptor, painter and performer. His very first achievement entitled Pure (1999) explored the theme of transformation in a filmed performance in which he covered his body with mud and cow dung, believed to be a source of purification in the Hindu religion, and lay like a corpse in the middle of a field. The issues of displacement, exodus, migration, also constitute a major theme in his production. As witnessed by his work Two Cows (2003), a representation of the daily distribution of milk on bikes, or his immense sculpture Jal Mein Kumbh, Kumbh Mein Jal Hai (The Water Is in the Pot, and the Pot Is in the Water), produced in 2012.

With works now on display worldwide, Subodh Gupta maintains close ties with France which has presented him with many opportunities. It was, in fact, here that he first became known. At the invitation of curator Nicolas Bourriaud, he exhibited his work for the first time in France in 1999 at the Contemporary Art Centre in Sète. He was then invited to participate in the inaugural exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris in 2002, before being nominated guest professor at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts two years later. The Parisian art-gallery In Situ owned by Fabienne Leclerc then dedicated two exhibitions to his work, in 2005 and 2007.

In 2011, Subodh Gupta participated in the ‘‘Paris Delhi Bombay’’ exhibition at the Pompidou Centre, and became a Knight in the Order of Arts and Literature in 2013. More recently, he was the subject of an exhibition at the Galleria Continua in 2016 and a major retrospective at La Monnaie de Paris in 2018. In 2023, Subodh Gupta was awarded the annual ‘‘carte blanche’’ by Le Bon Marché, thus succeeding Ai Weiwei, Joana Vasconcelos and Leandro Erlich. Visitors were then able to (re)discover his work in three monumental sculptures comprised of secondhand objects, thousands of utensils and fragments of mirrors, including Sangam I and Sangam II, a traditional Indian pot and a bucket which were hung in all majesty from the skylights of the department store, on either side of its central staircase.

The flagship artwork by Subodh Gupta, that you may already know, is indisputably Very Hungry God (2006), a shining, monumental skull solely comprised of kitchen utensils, pots and pans, which swept up all the honours at the ‘‘Nuit blanche’’ at the Church of Saint-Bernard de la Chapelle in Paris in 2006. This work became one of the most illustrious examples of contemporary art, along with For the Love of God, a skull encrusted with diamonds by Damien Hirst, one year later.