Shilpa Gupta: One Palm Closer to the Sky

For the eighth edition of the “Furla Series” program, Fondazione Furla and GAM – Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Milan present One Palm Closer to the Sky, a solo exhibition by Shilpa Gupta, curated by Bruna Roccasalva.

One of the most influential voices in international contemporary art, Shilpa Gupta explores language, censorship, mobility and the structures that shape individual lives and freedom. Working across sculpture, light installations, video, sound, and performance, Gupta creates works that shift between territories and languages, and between singularity and collectivity, intimacy and public life, through works that couple conceptual rigor and accessibility.

One Palm Closer to The Sky presents a series of new productions that explores the pivotal themes of Gupta’s work: her interest in language and text, the active involvement of spectators, the reworking of everyday objects and the capacity to create short-circuits between art and life, partly through interventions that move out of institutional spaces only to take root in the public sphere.

The project forms part of the artist’s broader exploration of the relationship between the individual and the systems of control that shape their existence, and of the way in which the media, language and institutions shape our perception of ourselves and the world. Within this exploration, One Palm Closer to The Sky focuses in particular on that sense of hope which, after generations of struggles for freedom, continues to endure, even as it appears today to be faltering in the face of the growing rise of authoritarian tendencies on a global scale.

Through the work of Shilpa Gupta, who critically examines narratives of identity, belonging and boundary, the GAM’s nineteenth-century collection—a testament to a historical period in which these concepts took shape—re-engages with the tensions of the present.

With an exhibition itinerary that sets out from the museum courtyard with the site-specific work HOPE (2026) and unfolds across the five ground-floor galleries through a variety of works ranging from the illuminated sign Truth (2026) to the iconic split-flap display SoundOnMySkin (2024/2025), from the sound installation When the Stone Sang to the Glass (Bella Ciao) (2025/2026) to the participatory installation Breathe (2024/2026), the exhibition offers an overview of Shilpa Gupta’s practice, highlighting her ability to transform research into experience and to make art a tool for inquiry and critical reflection, capable of opening up spaces for listening, imagination and dialog.

The project represents the seventh event in the “Furla Series,” the exhibition cycle that Fondazione Furla has been developing since 2017 in partnership with major Italian art institutions, featuring an all-female program designed to celebrate and promote the contributions of women artists to contemporary culture.

One Palm Closer to the Sky was born out of a long-standing partnership between Fondazione Furla and GAM – Galleria d’Arte Moderna, one that began in 2021 and involves a series of annual exhibitions where contemporary art interacts with the museum’s spaces and collection.