Shilpa Gupta: Someone Else

Someone Else is a site specific project about one hundred books written anonymously or under pen names.

Installed in a public library, one hundred frames are placed near relevant books with extracts from book covers, with the false identities purposefully assumed by the writer and the reason why their original identity had to be forsaken. The blurred faces behind the frames echo half truths, becoming a register of impositions, vulnerabilities and fears associated with the very first introduction of the self – a name. Be it to conceal one’s gender, often that of a woman but sometimes of a man too, or to avoid persecution by one’s own country, or for love and approval of the family, or to write a language, or for fear of being labeled the ‘mad’ protagonist of one’s ownbook, or to be multiple selves or to publish a rejected work, writers have sought freedom in being someone else.
This work can be installed only in a real library where there are real books and people come to borrow them. It cannot be exhibited otherwise, and is site specific only in a library which has the books mentioned.

The work will be installed at the Villena Public Library in the Plaza de Armas.