Sculptor, painter, and installation artist Bharti Kher explores the power of objects to evoke and inform psychological experience. One of India’s most prominent contemporary artists, Kher uses the “medium” of traditional and sperm-shaped bindis in her practice, whether employed in swirling painted gestures or running through her eclectic range of large sculptural installations. For Kher, the bindi—the traditional forehead dot worn by Hindu women – symbolizes a complex intersection of religious ritual, domesticity, commodity, and aesthetic beauty. Her sculptural installation pieces have included a large-scale cube of defunct radiators and life-sized elephants covered in her signature bindis. “I’m still not interested in the thread [that’s] supposed to connect me all together with my work or otherwise,” she says. “We are all hybrids and totally unpredictable. I wanted to make that apparent in my practice.”
Indian, b. 1969, London, United Kingdom, based in New Delhi, India
[Artsy]
Sculptor, painter, and installation artist Bharti Kher explores the power of objects to evoke and inform psychological experience. One of India’s most prominent contemporary artists, Kher uses the “medium” of traditional and sperm-shaped bindis in her practice, whether employed in swirling painted gestures or running through her eclectic range of large sculptural installations. For Kher, the bindi—the traditional forehead dot worn by Hindu women – symbolizes a complex intersection of religious ritual, domesticity, commodity, and aesthetic beauty. Her sculptural installation pieces have included a large-scale cube of defunct radiators and life-sized elephants covered in her signature bindis. “I’m still not interested in the thread [that’s] supposed to connect me all together with my work or otherwise,” she says. “We are all hybrids and totally unpredictable. I wanted to make that apparent in my practice.”
Indian, b. 1969, London, United Kingdom, based in New Delhi, India
[Artsy]