Bharti Kher

About the Exhibition

Bharti Kher (b. 1969, London, United Kingdom) connects New Delhi and New York City with this nearly eighteen-foot-tall bronze universal mother figure, her most ambitious artwork to date. Its source is a miniature statue from the artist’s “Intermediaries” series, assembled by recomposing broken clay figurines. Kher finds these small objects in secondhand markets in India, where she moved in 1992 after being raised and educated in the United Kingdom.

This colossal sculpture reflects Kher’s cross-cultural identity and her appreciation for India’s rich material culture. Every meaning-laden detail and distressed surface of the original hand-crafted object has been meticulously magnified to reflect the journey of this matriarch’s creation. In contrast to urban statuary that commemorates historic individuals or events, Ancestor enters the public space as an allegorical representation paying homage to both the generations that came before and those to follow. Kher’s temporary monument echoes the spirit of the Statue of Liberty. She is an empowered force fostering a diverse community—a hybrid figure whose symbolic references to multiculturalism and plurality embody the possibility of an interconnected space of belonging and care.

The exhibition is curated by Public Art Fund Adjunct Curator, Daniel S. Palmer, PhD

Ancestor is commissioned by Public Art Fund, New York, and is in the collection of the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi.

The Intermediary family (2018)

Photo by Stephen White, Courtesy of Stephen White/Frieze

The Intermediary (2018)

Photo credit Thailand Biennale Official Catalogue Photographers

Photography Marek Kruszewski

"The engagement with balance studies the question of dynamic equilibrium: Kher seems as preoccupied with the equilibrium of physical forces, as psychological. She achieves a “steady state” by a surreal conjunction of elements. Drawn from found objects these works are strange tantalizing conjunctions of disparate forms and things – all held together in a delicate precarious balance."— Gayatri Sinha (from the press note)

"Kher pumps blood and life through the building. Her works are not commentaries but run a parallel course to things that already exist. From time to time strange, fascinating, discomfiting, wonderful strata arise when Kher posits works that are in complete accord with the "real" world. Her exhibition is a bit like a drawing on acetate, which is placed over an existing reality, producing a variety of new elements in different areas."— Stephanie Rosenthal (from This Breathing House)

Photography Alex Delfanne

"A cast might sit in her studio for months or even years, waiting for the right textile, the right bit of ceramic, the right wooden object to complement its form and malleability and transformation Kher seeks in the work."— Rebecca M. Brown (from Bharti Kher: Matter)

Photography Maegan Hill-Carroll

"... Kher's sculptures address the physicality and inherent vulnerability of the body and quietly challenge our perceptions of the body in contemporary culture. As tender portraits of women, with their resolved sense of calm and gentle rolls of flesh, the works distil a very human set of emotions, beyond simply the rendering of their figurative form."— Jo Higgins (from 20th Biennale of Sydney- The Guide)

Photography Ben Symons

"She blends poetics with the portentous. Her work is life affirming in all its vicissitudes and her language is her own."— Margaret Moore (from Bharti Kher: In Her Own Language)

"Kher's project reflects on maritime travel, highlighted by her interest in mapping and typography and references the migration of people to Africa, the Middle East and Europe."

"... they form a heterogeneous narrative in which Kher further explores the artistic strategy of stripping objects of their meaning and making them open to misinterpretation and magic, creating alluring works of abstract beauty."

Photography Stefan Altenburger Photography

"By both confronting and accepting gravitational forces all objects can find their perfect equilibrium, poise and meaning."— the artist

Photography Dheeraj Thakur

"In deconstructing Kher's oeuvre, one finds three major interlocking intellectual concerns, including an understanding of the body and its mutation, the role and agency of art, and the abstraction that results from repeated forms and gestures."— Sandhini Poddar (from Misdemeanors)

Photography Yan Tao

"Featuring works that reference known forms and physical anatomy, the show highlights Kher's ability to imbue her artworks with psychosocial solemnity through the process of transformation."

Photography Keith Park

"Kher both excavates and destabilizes the inherent meanings found in common objects to arrive at poetic conjunctions that speak of social tensions and personal discoveries."

"Her chimeras, mythical monsters and allegorical tales combine references that are topical and traditional, political and post-colonial at the same time."

Photography Hina

"The artist plays with mythology, cultural and gender stereotypes, and tropes of domesticity to map a route on which viewers may travel between the familiar and the alien, the mundane and the divine, all while remaining in a one place."

Photography Genevieve Hanson.

"Known above all for her bold use of colourfully vibrant, ready-made, stick-on vinyl bindis on create spectacular and labour-intensive paintings, Kher introduces us to a new form of the medium and simultaneously challenges our understanding of what a painting can be."

Photography Stephen White, Guillaume Ziccarelli.

Photography Guillaume Ziccarelli.

"...draws objects from the sphere of domesticity ...in order to explore the space of disjunction the domestic occupies poised between the promise of ideal perfection of utopia and the disturbing conformism that marks suburbia."

"By bringing to attention the overlooked world with its everyday acts... and then re-assessing their meaning, Kher's work repositions the viewer's relationship with the object."

Photography Mike Bruce.

"In a clever inversion of the creation myth which begins with the churning of a sacred mountain by a serpent, Kher offers a quid pro quo of creation and sacrifice."

Photography Andy Keate.

Photography Colin Davidson.

"With the wit and irreverence of a prankster and a mad scientist, she brings a camp sensibility to her fables which unfold against the backdrop of a technological and ecological dystopia where machines, humans, animals, and nature are out of joint."

Photography Florian Kleinefenn.

"Kher's work is a highly personal vision of a society maladjusted to the vagaries of market forces and the effects of displacement on one hand and the growing disconnect with the animal world on the other."

Photography Shankar Natarajan.