Bharti Kher,

Some Lesser Known Facts About Bharti Kher

• Bharti Kher is an England-born Indian contemporary artist. She is known for making sculptures, paintings, installations, and her most prominent saree portraits. Through her artwork, she tries to highlight issues like migration, identity, sexuality, femininity, social roles, gender relationships, traditional rituals, and the culture of India. Kher has worked with many famous art galleries such as Hauser & Wirth, Galerie Perrotin, GALLERYSKE, and Nature Morte.

• After completing her graduation in London in 1991, she decided to travel for which she had to make a choice between New York and New Delhi. She tossed a coin and decided to travel to New Delhi. In an interview, she revealed that she came to India for a few months, but when she met Subodh Gupta, she decided to stay in Delhi. She said,
  

  I had no intention of staying in India; I just thought I’m going to travel around the country.” ^[4]The Womb

• The attribute of juxtaposing contradictory elements in her artwork and giving them a constructive meaning is what makes her artwork different from others. She takes inspiration from day-to-day life activities. The reflection of the culture of both England and India in her artwork shows her understanding of both cultures as she has spent her life in both countries.

• After making her first bindi artwork “Spit and Swallow” in 1996, Bharti Kher made a transition in her artwork by adding sculpture to her art forms. Before this, she only makes paintings. ^[5]Art Basel 

• In 1997, Bharti Kher along with her husband Subodh Gupta, and some other artists, formed the Khoj International Artists’ Association to collect funds to help the artists. ^[6]The Better India

• The sculpture “The Skin Speaks a Language Not Its Own” (2006) by Bharti Kher is considered one of her ‘most talked about’ artworks. It is a life-sized sculpture of a female Indian elephant, made up of fibreglass layered with thousands of sperm-shaped bindis. According to Indian culture, the elephant in the sculpture represents Lord Ganesha, and the use of bindi represents peace and feminity; therefore, the artwork by Bharti Kher can be regarded as an apt archetype of India. In the sculpture, Bharti has shown the elephant lying on her knees, seeming peaceful and painful at the same time. She has left her viewers to analyse whether the elephant is trying to rise up or lying exhausted or died in her artwork. ^[7]Sotheby’s

  

• In 2010, Kher became the first Indian contemporary female artist to be counted among the big numbers league of Anish Kapoor, Raqib Shaw, and Subodh Gupta, after her artwork, ‘The Skin Speaks A Language Not Its Own,’ (2006) sold for approximately 7 crores at the Contemporary Art Evening Sale at Sotheby’s gallery. ^[8]The Economic Times 

• Her art series ‘The Virus Series’ is a 30-year-long project that she started in 2010, and will complete by 2039. In this artwork, Kher created a swirling mass using bindi artwork along with text through which she gave her predictions. In an interview, she described her artwork and said,
  

  For me, Virus is just an amalgamation of all the different interests that I have. Being alive, living, sexuality, contemporary politics, so many different things. And every year its marked by how old I am. The project started when I was 40 and will end when I am 70.” ^[9]The Week

• For her artwork, ‘Six Women’ (2013-2015), which consists of the sculptures of six women, Kher appointed six sex workers as her sitters. In this artwork, she portrayed the physique and the facial expression of the sex workers, which reflected their emotions. Through this artwork, Kher highlighted the issue of vulnerability that comes from the nudity of females. ^[10]Art Basel

  

• In 2016, the Indian fashion designer Manish Arora used Bharti Kher’s bindi theme to design a dress for a fashion show at ‘Paris Fashion Week SS17.’

  

• In her solo show, ‘Strange Attractors,’ which was held at Nature Morte Gallery, Delhi in 2021, she exhibited her mixed-media sculpture “A Natural Unity Of Opposites” made by a resin-coated saree, placed folded on the trunk of a buffalo, hanging from a rope, and balanced with circular wooden beams. The art piece is based on the idea of “knowing self,” which was coined by the Greek philosopher Aristotle. While explaining the art piece in an interview, she said,
  

  The work describes the state of flux where chaos at all times could just be at a tipping point and yet there’s counterbalance and stability. We’re always managing many things, balancing things out like ourselves, families, our sense of well-being and anxieties.”

  

• In the same show, she exhibited another sculpture of a disfigured female monkey, who is balancing a tiny house on her tail. Through the sculpture, she might reflect the idea of existence and balance. In an interview, she talked about the sculpture and said,
  

  She’s strange but for me, she’s the shaman. She welcomes you to this strange world where we’re not really sure what’s going or coming.” ^[11]The Indian Express

  

• Her sculpture “Pieta” is inspired by the Italian sculptor Michelangelo’s Renaissance sculpture of the same name ‘Pieta.’ In Michelangelo’s Renaissance sculpture, he has shown Mother Marry carrying the dead Jesus, whereas, Kher’s sculpture is a raw and weathered statue. In an interview, she said that she portrayed her mother through the sculpture, and said,
  

  [Through Pieta] I am saying this is my mother and she is the old female ageing body. I wanted to engage with the idea of an old woman politically as well. She is not the revered goddess. I am not making her bigger than she is physically, but emotionally and psychologically this work is gigantic because our mother is the most significant person in our lives.” ^[12]The Week

  

• Her artwork “Ancestor” is a sculpture of an Indian woman who has 24 heads. It is a clay sculpture painted with some pastel shades and has a cracked and peeling surface. The artwork has been installed in the form of an 18 feet tall statue at Doris C. Freedman Plaza at the southeast entrance to Central Park, New York. In an interview, she gave an interpretation of the artwork and said,
  

  The figure is a mother, but also contains the masculine.” The agglutinated heads represent “all her children,” she added — but also perhaps “her other selves.” ^[13]The New York Times

  

• Some more notable sculptures by Bharti Kher include ‘A Wonderful Anarchy’ (2019), ‘Mother and Child; Amar, Akbar, Anthony’ (2017), ‘Cloud Walker’ (2013), ‘The Messenger’ (2012), ‘Dominate’ (2011), ‘Warrior with cloak and shield’ (2008), and ‘Misdemeanours’ (2006).

  

• Bharti Kher is also known for her unique mirror art. In an interview, she talked about her mirror work “Cause and Effect,” which she made by using a cracked mirror and bindis, and said that she has amalgamated two contradictory ideas in this artwork, and gave it a new meaning. She said that according to Hindu beliefs, broken mirrors are considered a sign of bad luck, on the other hand, bindi represents peace, power, and feminity, and this artwork is a fusion of both, broken mirror and bindi. She said,
  

  For me it was like if I break them, this is in a way my karma. My act of punk. And I sort of had this thing where it gives me the freedom. And when you break something, you free it from itself. It is an act of defiance, but also broken mirrors are gorgeous, so to turn something that is considered to be not beautiful and show­ing that it actually is, is something that I do quite a lot. I work with opposites.” ^[14]Open 

• Some of her other famous mirror art includes ‘Indra’s net mirror (series),’ ‘The Starry Night after V.G.’ (2011), ‘Placebo landscape’ (2019), ‘The single white line that heard the future calling’ (2019), and ‘Gentle Bitch’ (2020).

  

• Bharti Kher uses resin-dipped sarees to make wall art, sculptures (by wrapping sarees on chairs or wooden staircases), and saree portraits. The admirers of her artwork consider her saree portraits incredible, which she makes by wrapping resin-dipped sarees on cement pillars in a way that reflects the characteristics of the person to whom the portrait is dedicated. 

• In 2018, she made the saree portrait “Cloak for MM” as a tribute to Mrinalini Mukherjee, who died in 2015. Mrinalini Mukherjee was a renowned sculptor and Bharti’s close friend. To make this portrait, Kher used Mukherjee’s own sarees, which made this artwork more realistic.

  

• In 2020, she designed the bags for the Christian Dior company, Lady Dior, using her signature bindi motif. She brought together two cultural elements i.e., Indian bindi and western Christian Dior company in this project. In an interview, she talked about the idea behind this project and said,
  

  It’s two signatures; you join them and you have a hybrid. It was seamless. And since I am a sculptor, I don’t think of a bag as any different from any other three-dimensional surface.” ^[15]Vogue

  

• In 2021, she made the saree portrait “Benazir,” which was based on the life and assassination of the Pakistani politician Benazir Bhutto, who had made predictions about her assassination. The portrait consists of five holes that represent the five bullet shots on her body. 

• Some other notable saree portraits made by Bharti Kher include ‘Portrait Manju’ (2013), ‘My friend unnamed’ (2014), and ‘Portrait Nirmila’ (2017).

• Apart from the saree portraits, Kher is also known for her saree wall arts and installations among which some of the most notable include ‘Man woman I’ (2012), ‘Dominate’ (2011), ‘I find a way to keep it all together’ (2011), and ‘Many ways to say the same thing’ (2010).