Bharti Kher


Bharti Kher is a British-Indian contemporary artist. Her work encompasses painting, sculpture and installation, often incorporating bindis, the decorative forehead dot worn by women in India. The Skin Speaks A Language Not Its Own, a sculpture of an elephant adorned with white bindis, is an excellent example of incorporating Hindu mythology and bindi in her art work.

Biography

Kher was born in 1969 in London, England to Indian parents. From 1987-88 Kher studied at Middlesex Polytechnic, Cat Hill, London, UK. She graduated with a B.F.A in painting from Newcastle Polytechnic in 1991. At 23, she moved to New Delhi in India, where she lives and works today. She is married to Indian contemporary artist Subodh Gupta and has 2 children.

Work

Bharti Kher has worked in a variety of media creating paintings, sculptures, installations, and text. Kher's primary material is manufactured versions of traditional Indian bindi. Throughout her career Kher has kept some repeating patterns in her paintings from her student years from the late 1980s to the early 1990s. Kher considers how the realities of human life is perceived in our current time. Her works displays fondness towards human drama, as well as intrinsic love. Her sculptures and collages often depict hybrid forms that unite different social constructs such as race, and gender etc.
The Skin Speaks a language not its own is one of her most famous and talked about work. It is a sculpture that represents a life size female elephant made from fiberglass and adorned by numerous bindis. This sculpture combine two of the most common symbols of Indian tradition and the Hindu religion. This sculpture can be seen as the archetype of India.

Exhibitions

Kher has exhibited extensively since 1993. Her work has been shown at the All India Fine Arts and Crafts Society, the Irish Museum of Modern Art the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Jack Shainman Gallery, the Frieder Burda Museum, the Rockbund Art Museum, the Freud Museum London, the National Gallery of Canada, and the Vancouver Art Gallery.

Collections

Kher's work is in the Tate Modern in London, the Vancouver Art Gallery, and the Walker Art Center.