Throughout history, artists have turned to their practice to question power and reimagine how we relate to the world around us. In moments of social and ecological upheaval, art has the ability to transcend aesthetics. It can become an act of resistance, a gesture of moral clarity. British-Indian artist and sculptor Anish Kapoor’s (b. 1954) work embodies this conviction. For him, art can work as a critical instrument to uncover the hidden and challenge what demands accountability.
The Turner Prize–winning artist recently pushed the boundaries of protest art with ‘BUTCHERED’ a bold collaboration with Greenpeace in the North Sea, created in response to the escalating climate crises unfolding across the world.
Born in Mumbai, India, Anish Kapoor began his career creating delicate sculptures and installations made from colored pigments, their vibrant surfaces evoking both material fragility and spiritual depth. By the late 1980s, his practice reached a turning point as he began to rethink the relationship between interior and exterior form.
His early works often employed powdered pigment shaped into precise geometric structures, while his later experiments in the mid-1990s introduced new materials such as fiberglass, stainless steel, and PVC. Across these shifts, certain constants remain — his use of intense monochromatic hues such as deep reds, luminous blues, and pure blacks, and his enduring fascination with the void. The ritual and elemental quality of red, in particular, aligns with his broader practice: where matter becomes the message, and the body’s interior transforms into the world’s exterior.
Through these colors and forms, Kapoor transforms sculpture into an experience of both presence and absence. He is now best known for his monumental works and public installations that blur the boundaries between object, space, and perception.
Anish Kapoor’s ‘BUTCHERED’ spans a 12-by-8-metre canvas, onto which 1,000 litres of a blood-red mixture made from seawater, beetroot powder, organic coffee granules, and non-toxic pond dye were released down the side of a Shell-owned gas rig. As the liquid cascaded down the surface, it formed a raw, dramatic stain that confronted fossil fuel extraction at its very source. The result was a visceral visual scream. It was at once an act of protest and a continuation of Kapoor’s signature engagement with pigment, where color becomes both material and metaphor for the body, violence, and life itself.
Kapoor has condemned the oil and gas industry’s operations as “criminal” and “morally corrupt,” urging fellow artists to use their platforms to speak out and protect the planet. His installation transforms the rig’s industrial façade into a visceral surface of confrontation- a vertical wound that lays bare the violence of unchecked consumption and its human cost. Kapoor’s call to action challenges artists everywhere to consider how art itself can serve as a form of resistance: not only a pursuit of beauty, but a declaration of conscience.
On view at the Jewish Museum in New York from October 24, 2025, through February 1, 2026, ‘Anish Kapoor: Early Works’ brings together rarely seen pieces by the pioneering artist, featuring his iconic pigment sculptures alongside works on paper and selections from his personal sketchbooks.
