Kanchana Gupta (b. 1974) is an artist of Indian origin who lives and works in Singapore. She works with paint, installation and mixed media and has shown her works in three solo exhibitions and in many group exhibitions in Singapore and overseas. She completed an MA in Fine Arts from LASALLE College of the Arts, where she was the recipient of the Winston Oh Travel Award.

Kanchana’s works are often not only poetic and sensuously painterly but also sculptural and object-based in nature as she manipulates the materiality of oil paint through multi-step processes and combines it with various social materials like jute and tarpaulin, revealing to the viewer not just visual, but emotional, complexities. Her works are not only an investigation of the behaviour of oil paint — to curl, crack, fold, tear, fragment, compress and leave residues — but also the spatial interaction of the occurring folds, cracks and tears. Her practice and works deploy materials and processes as a metaphor, as if they are a conscious manifestation of subconscious observations and experiences. Her works are in institutional collection in Singapore and in private collections in Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Japan, Hong Kong and the USA. (www.kanchanagupta.com)

During her residency, Kanchana worked on a video project examining the camera gaze and the process of the construction of sensuality and desirability of a female body, in mainstream Hindi cinema songs. 

“Recently, I found myself interested in exploring the history, iconology, artifices and the process behind the creation of an image which was very common in mainstream Indian cinema songs especially during the 80s and 90s when I was growing up. The image in question is of a female body, gyrating sensuously and making suggestive gestures while in a rain soaked chiffon sari that clings to her and accentuates her curves. It has been a continued motif in mainstream Indian cinema, capturing the male gaze and imagination for over a 100 years. This voyeuristic image is basically a construct, created to serve a purpose. However over time, the construct becomes perceived as reality in our collective imagination and memory.

I decided to explore this image as well as the role it played informing my perception of my own femininity and desirability during my growing years, using the medium of film, and my own body.”