Shubha Taparia
Shubha Taparia (b.1975, Ahmedabad, India) is a multidisciplinary artist and curator, based in London since 2001. She is a postgraduate from Central Saint Martins, London, 2007.
Exploring the material force in her own compilations of ‘the everyday’ and the urban environment, representations of history, transition and power are brought to the forefront in all their irony and precariousness. Her practice spans photography, performance, film, mixed media, sound, installation and participatory art. With references to older texts and art forms, she tries to find a sense of universality, crossing cultures and localities, exploring the duality of loss and impermanence.
Forthcoming Museum shows include a site-specific commission at Museo Sant’Orsola for the exhibition The Rose That Grew from Concrete, curated by Morgane Lucquet Laforgue, Florence (September-December 2025); Permanent display exhibit at Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Humboldt Forum, Berlin (2025), accompanied by an artist conversation with Kerstin Pinther, Curator for Modern and Contemporary Art in a Global Context, Museum für Asiatische Kunst & Ethnologisches Museum; and Global Gold exhibition at Fondazione Bruschettini, Diocesan Museum, Genoa (2025).
Her work is part of international collections, including the Museum für Asiatische Kunst (Asian Art Museum) – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin at the Humboldt Forum, Berlin, on permanent display; Serendipity Arts Foundation, New Dehli; JSW Foundation, Mumbai; the Távora Sequeira Pinto Collection, Porto; the Corfu Heritage Foundation, Greece; as well as in important private collections in Europe, Canada, and India.
Taparia’s most recent exhibitions include: Outdoors site-specific installation at Linkhouse – Orkney Arts Residency, Birsay (2023); Transitional Weaves 1 (Illumination series) (2022), acquired by the Museum für Asiatische Kunst (Asian Art Museum) – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin at the Humboldt Forum, Berlin, as part of their permanent display and collection; Gilded: States of Impermanence (solo), UNIT 7, London (2023-2024); Silent Rhythm: Shubha Taparia and Mohamed Monaiseer, UNIT 7, London (2022-23); Crescent (solo), UNIT 7, London (2021-2022), accompanied by a publication by UNIT 7 with the artist’s works of the past five years; Britannia-Pallas: The Twilight of the Idols, Contemporary Art Museum of Chania, Chania (2021); Spirit
in the Inanimate (solo), Prahlad Bubbar, London (2019); Memories and Might, collateral project of Kochi-Muziris Biennale at Kashi Gallery, Kochi (2018); Silhouette of an Unknown Landscape (solo, site-specific installation), UNIT 7, London (2018); Performance (solo), Slate Projects, London (2018); Prossalendi’s Britannia, Ionian Academy, Corfu (2018); Point of Apoapsis (curated by Shubha Taparia), Prahlad Bubbar, London (2017); Landscape and Silence, collateral project of Kochi-Muziris Biennale at Kashi Gallery, Kochi (2016); Averard Hotel, Slate Projects, London (2016); See In Your Mind’s Eye (solo), Kashi Gallery, Kochi (2015).
In 2022 she was shortlisted for the Gladstone Park public art commission. She was a finalist of The Creekside Open 2013, selected by Paul Noble and hosted by APT Galleries, London (2013), as well as a finalist of the Arte Laguna Prize, Arsenale, Venice (2013), and the Mostyn Open at Mostyn Galleries, Llandudno (2011). Shubha Taparia’s recent solo exhibition has been listed as one of the top exhibitions to visit in London by Forbes (Joanne Shurvell, Forbes, 2023). Her work has been featured in Forbes, Architects’ Journal, RIBA Journal, FAD magazine, Contemporary Art Society, among various other national and international media.