Sunil and his Parents (Ram & Penny) (circa 1974 - 2021)

Sunil Gupta

archival pigment print on paper

Classification:

Photograph

Materials:

Archival paper

Dimensions:

35.6 x 53.3 cm

Credit:

Presented by the Contemporary Art Society through the Collections Fund at Frieze, 2021/22

Scheme:

Collections Fund at Frieze (2016 - )

Ownership history:

Purchased from the Hales Gallery, London, New York at Frieze, London by the Contemporary Art Society through its Collections Fund at Frieze, October 2021; presented to the Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston, 2021/22

Relationship:

Hales, London, New York Frieze The Harris, Preston

Subject:

Portraits, Black (presence)

Sunil Gupta works as a photographer, writer and curator, seeking to promote a greater understanding of questions regarding representation, sexuality, access and cultural difference. His career, which spans four decades, has been either community-based, as he photographed other members of the queer community, or introspective, as he documented his medical journey after being diagnosed as HIV+. Gupta uses his own lived experience of race, migration and queer identity as a point of departure for photographic projects. Sunil and his Parents (Ram & Penny) is a portrait of the artist with his mother and father. His parents hold each other while he stands slightly apart. The second image, Shalini, Rudi, Sunil, Léo, and Stanley, was taken in an apartment in Montreal that he shared with his sister and partner, both of whom feature in the image. The two photographs show the people he was closest to: his biological family on the one hand and his “chosen family” of friends and lovers he made through the gay liberation movement in Montreal at the time.

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