Exhibits & Events

The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation and Penn Live Arts are pleased to present Chrysalis, an exhibition of paintings by artist Pragya Gupta. The exhibition will be on view in the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Pennsylvania, October 15 through December 13, 2026.

Pragya Gupta’s work is about transformation; her practice is grounded in a sustained inquiry into what it means to become intimate with one’s own life. Her paintings explore the tension between the selves we construct and the more intimate parts of ourselves that can be harder to hear.

Chrysalis is centered on a new series of tetraptychs (four-paneled artworks) alongside earlier works that trace the evolution of this inquiry. Across the new works, the four-panel structure, scale, and relationship between commercial canvas and stitched fabric remain constant, while the visual language changes markedly from one work to another. The shared structure becomes a kind of container for change, allowing the same inquiry to unfold differently in each work.

“In the three tetraptychs I wanted to explore how transformation unfolds across different kinds of time and scale. How the histories and textures of different materials—khadi, cotton, and raw linen—become part of the meaning itself. Each work brings together a different substrate stitched onto commercial canvas, creating a tension between optimized time and textured time. Together, the three works move across the time and scale of a single lifetime, multiple lifetimes, and eternal cyclical time.”

— Pragya Gupta

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Please join the Sachs Program and Penn Live Arts on Thursday, October 15, to celebrate the exhibition opening with a public reception in the Annenberg Center for Performing Arts beginning at 4:30 pm.

This program is free and open to the public. Registration is requested but is not required to attend.

• Thursday, October 15, 2026, 4:30–6:30 PM
• Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, 3680 Walnut Street, University of Pennsylvania