A brush with... Sunil Gupta

About this episode

Sunil Gupta talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to film-makers, and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Across more than half a century Gupta has explored queer identity, migration and race through photography. Born in New Delhi in 1953, but based in Canada and the UK as well as India since he became an artist, he has reflected on his personal background and autobiography to explore a wealth of social and political themes, from queer desire and relationships, to the social and geographical environments in which LGBTQ life and love happens, to political violence and the oppression of queer people, and the HIV/Aids crisis and its legacy. He has said that he “couldn’t separate the living from the art-making”. Working in series that often have novel conceptual structures and explore different modes of presentation and expression in the photographic space, Gupta is both an artist and activist, with a long-held conviction to represent his own experience and that of people and communities like him in cultural fields where they have largely been absent. In this podcast, he reflects on his discovery of photography and hi