Indian artist Subodh Gupta addresses the tension between traditional and contemporary iconography in Indian and Western culture in his works. His current video explores the theme of purity. It features the artist taking a shower in reverse mode while covering his body with cow dung and emerging into the corridor of an urban building covered from head to toe with manure. The impact of the work stems from the gap between the perceptions of purity in different cultures: cow dung, which the West perceives as defiled waste, is considered as a sacred substance with purifying virtues in Indian tradition. Gupta, who transpires in-between traditional and modern cultures, is conscious of these contradictory notions. Reversing the chronology of the event, he challenges the way in which we establish knowledge in keeping with the cultural baggage imprinted in us. To western eyes, the work sets out to expand our reading of the notion of purity.

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