Shilpa Gupta’s Los Angeles debut, “Some Suns Fell Off,” reframes nationalism through poetic fragments and disrupted forms. Photo by Jeff McLane, courtesy the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles

Humans once believed Earth was the natural center of the universe, with the Sun, planets and stars orbiting around it. For centuries, many civilizations maintained the conviction that god was orchestrating the cosmos, and a few elite individuals—kings or spiritual guides—had been chosen to act on their behalf on Earth. The Roman Empire, for a long time, was believed to be undefeatable, destined to expand without limit and rule the globe. But over time, the geocentric model was subverted by new knowledge, traditional religions faced sweeping scrutiny and most historical empires collapsed under their own weight. If we look at the course of human civilization in perspective, many so-called secular truths and orders have been similarly questioned, overturned and dissolved—exposing the inherent arbitrariness in all ideological constructions.

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For decades, the Indian artist Shilpa Gupta has addressed these themes: how cultural identity—both individual and collective—is established and how shifting notions or “truths” shape it. In pursuing this challenging investigation, the artist has consistently employed a minimalist vocabulary that distills complex meanings into a few incisive poetic fragments of image, sound, environments and atmosphere—both precise and open-ended. Silence and contemplation are at the core of Gupta’s practice and artistic strategy. She invites the viewer to go beyond the surface of the aesthetic presentation, prompting a deeper engagement with both the work and its underlying message. In contrast to the exuberance that often characterizes Indian art, Gupta instead pares her presentations down to their essence: artworks as the bone structure of a concept, aesthetic epigrams dense with meaning that demand time and focused observation as they slowly unfold to the senses and the mind.

For her debut Los Angeles exhibition, “Some Suns Fell Off,” which opened during Frieze L.A. at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, the artist assembled a group of compelling visual and........

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