Bharti Kher

Bharti Kher
Born 1969
London
Education Newcastle Polytechnic

Bharti Kher (born 1969) is an Indian contemporary artist. Her work encompasses painting, sculpture and installation, often incorporating bindis, the popular forehead decoration worn by women in India, in her work.

Life

Bharti Kher was born in England. She studied painting, graduating in 1991 from Newcastle Polytechnic. At 23, she moved to New Delhi in India, where she lives and works today.[1] She is married to Indian Contemporary Artist Subodh Gupta.

Work

Kher's works are heterogeneous. Her work is engaged with the readymade, minimalism and abstraction (through repetition), mythology and narrativity.[2]

Overarching themes are the notion of the self as a multiple and culture's openness to misinterpretation.[3] She exploits the drama inherent in objects, tapping into mythologies and the numerous diverse associations a thing can bring.[3] Kher has said "I look everywhere and copy everyone – I am like a magpie that takes what it needs and turns an old shiny button into a beacon. Most of us are products of our lives."[4]

Bindis

In 1995 Kher was struck by a woman in a market wearing a 'sperm' bindi on her forehead. She asked the woman where it came from and went straight to the store. 'I walked in and said, "give me all the serpent bindis you have," which turned out to be a few packages that she stuck in her sketchbook. It turned out to be a supernova moment.'[5]

Since then, Bindis have become Kher’s signature, operating not so much as a central motif as a language that the artist has invented to articulate and animate her themes. Bindis swarm over sculptures endowing them with a cryptic second skin.[6] They are deployed in vivid chromatic constellations to form 'paintings' whose abstract patterns relate to the history of western art whilst seeming biological and essential – resembling cellular life viewed under a microscope or the intercourse of oceans and continents viewed from a satellite.[7] Each dot or sperm-like squiggle can be understood as a person, their arrangement en masse mapping demographic movement, the migrations and miscegenation of teeming populaces.

Kher created Symphony, an digital artwork about Bindi at 2012.

Hybrid beings

In sculptures and collages Kher has created hybrid beings that conjoin contradictions of gender, species, race and role. Sculptures such as 'Arione' (2004) and 'Arione's Sister' (2006) are part human, part animal; bare-breasted Amazons bearing cupcakes and shopping bags who each step forward with equanimity upon an equine leg culminating in a hoof.[8]

These beings bear out Kher's interest 'in the idea of the monster, the hybrid, the contradicting identities.'[5] They explore the multiple roles put upon and played out by women as well as the tendency to be perceived differently depending on who is doing the looking. Often the addition of clothing adds a blend of strength and vulnerability to her female figures.[9]

Hybridity is not confined to the animal kingdom in Kher's work but mixes freely with the arboreal as well. Two sculptures of trees, 'Solarium Series' (2007) and 'The Waq Tree' (2009), bear hundreds of shrunken animal heads as fruit.[10] These combine recognisable species with fantastical creations, their waxy, flesh-like material seeming disturbingly human.

New mythologies

Kher's works operate in a fabular realm, affecting a kind of Magic Realism.[11] Strongly narrative, they tap into legends but equally create their own strange stories.

Works such as 'The Waq Tree' (2009) and the mirror series 'Indra's Net' (2010) refer to specific sagas, yet in crafting the ancient symbols as physical forms Kher engages in ritual, giving life anew to the legends.[10]

In 'The skin speaks a language not its own' (2006), a slumped life-size she-elephant covered with thousands of tiny white sperm bindi, Kher has created a work endowed by mythology with multiple competing meanings:[12] 'A white elephant in Europe is a folly,' she explains. 'While in Asia it is a sign of good luck, and in Thailand, the King of Siam would give a white elephant as a gift to a person he would like to destroy. Myths legends, stories and associations are so different in different places.'[5]

Other sculptures such as 'An Absence of Assignable Cause' (2007), Kher's bindi-bedecked envisioning of a sperm whale's heart, are sufficiently astonishing and allusive to make their own mythologies.[13] Such embellished allegories belong to a distinctly Indian tradition whilst being undeniably new. Her art, according to the critic and curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, offers 'a very relevant negotiation with old India and the present ... it's a productive tension between tradition and modernity.'[5]

Bharti Kher is represented by Hauser & Wirth, GALLERYSKE and Galerie Perrotin.

Solo exhibitions

Source: Hauser and Wirth, GALLERYSKE

2014

Misdemeanours, Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai

2013

Anomalies, Kukje Gallery, Seoul

2012–13

Bind the Dream State to your Waking Life, Nature Morte, New Delhi

2012

Parasol Unit, London, England

Hauser & Wirth, New York NY

2011

Leave your smell, Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris, France

2010

inevitable undeniable necessary, Hauser & Wirth, London

Hauser & Wirth Outdoor Sculpture: Bharti Kher, Southwood Garden, St. James' Church, London

disturbia, utopia, house beautiful, GALLERYSKE, Bangalore

2008

Sing to them that will listen, Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris;

Virus, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK

2007

An Absence of Assignable Cause, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York CityA.;

An Absence of Assignable Cause, Gallery Nature Morte, New Delhi

2006

Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons because you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup, GALLERYSKE and Project 88, Mumbai

2004

Quasi-, mim-, ne-, near-, semi-, -ish, -like, GALLERYSKE, Bangalore

Hungry Dogs Eat Dirty Pudding, Nature Morte, New Delhi

2001

The Private Softness of Skin, Gallery Chemould, Mumbai, India

2000

The Private Softness of Skin, Bose Pacia Gallery, New York NY

Group Exhibitions

Source: Hauser & Wirth, GALLERYSKE

2013

Trade Routes, Hauser & Wirth London, London

GALLERYSKE, New Delhi Inaugural show, GALLERYSKE, New Delhi

We are Ours: A Collection of Manifestos for the Instant, Khoj International Artists’ Association, New Delhi

Art & Textiles – Fabric as Material and Concept in Modern Art from Klimt to the Present,Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Wolfsburg

Trade Routes, Hauser & Wirth, London

Misled by Nature: Contemporary Art and the Baroque, Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto (Travelling Exhibition)

2012


La Belle & la Bête, Institut Culturel Bernard Magrez, Bordeaux Dot Systems From Pointillism to Pixelation, Wilhelm-Hack-Museum, Ludwigshafen

India: Art Now, Arken Museum of Modern Art, Arken

Massive/Intensive: Contemporary Art from India, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv

Mystetskyi Arsenal, First International Biennale of Contemporary Art: The Best of Times, The Worst of Times Rebirth and Apocalypse in Contemporary Art, Kiev

2011

Indian Highway VI, MAXXI Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI Secolo, Rome, Italy

Paris – Delhi – Bombay, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France

Pattern ID, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City MO (Travelling Exhibition)

Festival der Tiere, Essl Museum, Klosterneuberg, Austria

Time Unfolded, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi, India

Indian Highway IV, Musée d'Art Contemporain, Lyon France

2010

Pattern ID, Akron Art Museum, Akron OH (Travelling Exhibition)

21st Century: Art in the first Decade, Queensland Art Gallery, Queensland, Australia

Tokyo Art Meeting, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan

Lebenszeichen. Altes Wissen in der zeitgenössischen Kunst / Signs of Life. Ancient Knowledge in Contemporary Art, Kunstmuseum Luzern, Lucerne, Switzerland

Susan Hefuna – Bharti Kher – Fred Tomaselli: Between the Worlds, Kunstmuseum Thun, Thun, Switzerland

2009

Nature Nation, Museum on the Seam, Jerusalem, Israel

Chalo! India: A New Era of Indian Art/Open Your Third Eye, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea (Travelling Exhibition)

Chalo! India: A New Era of Indian Art, Essl Museum, Klosterneuberg, Austria (Travelling Exhibition)

Indian Highway II, Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo, Norway

Who's afraid of the artists? A Selection of works from the Pinault Collection, Palais des Arts de Dinard, France

2008

Re-Imagining Asia. A Thousand Years of Separation, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Germany (Travelling Exhibition)

Chalo! India: A New Era of Indian Art, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan (Travelling Exhibition)

Distant Nearness, The Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art at Johnson County Community College, Kansas City KS

Indian Highway,Serpentine Gallery, London, England

India Moderna, Institut Valencia d'Art Modern, Valencia, Spain

2007

Hungry God, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada

2006

The 5th Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art', Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia,

Le Troisième Oeil, Lille 3000, Lille, France

2005

Zeitsprünge, Raumfolgen, IFA Galerie, Berlin, Germany

2004

Androgyne, Indian Habitat Center, New Delhi, India

2002

Khoj Residency Show, Khoj Studios, New Delhi, India

Photosphere, Nature Morte, New Delhi, India

2001

Kitch kitch Hota Hai, New Delhi, India

2000

Open Circle Exhibition, Lakeeren Art Gallery, Mumbai, India

1999

Embarkations, Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai, India

Awards

The Sanskriti Award, 2003; YFLO Woman Achiever of the Year, 2007; ARKEN Art Prize, 2010

References and notes

  1. ↑ Bharti Kher, ARKEN Museum of Modern Art
  2. ↑ Bharti Kher: Misdemeanours
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Bharti Kher, Khoj International Workshops
  4. ↑ Punj, Rajesh (April 2010). "Bharti Kher". Asian Art Newspaper.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 Holmes, Pernilla (April 2009). "Connecting the Dots". ARTnews: 96–101.
  6. ↑ Bharti Kher, HEART Herning Museum
  7. ↑ Bharti Kher inevitable undeniable necessary
  8. ↑ Bharti Kher ARKEN Museum of Modern Art
  9. ↑ Griselda Murray Brownm, The art of misunderstanding, Financial Times
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Susan Silas and Chrysanne Stathacos Conversation with Bharti Kher
  11. ↑ Bharti Kher The hot winds that blow from the West
  12. ↑ Bharti Kher Queensland Art Gallery
  13. ↑ Bharti Kher, The Saatchi Gallery

External links