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Lot 69

 

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Bharti Kher was born in London in 1969, and after completing her studies in the UK, she moved to New Delhi in the early 1990s where she still resides today with her husband the artist Subodh Gupta. As such, Kher has a distinct perspective when it comes to India, that of the reverse migrant. Holding the duality of both insider and outsider, the concepts of location, identity and culture are themes constantly challenged in her body of work.... Bharti Kher was born in London in 1969, and after completing her studies in the UK, she moved to New Delhi in the early 1990s where she still resides today with her husband the artist Subodh Gupta. As such, Kher has a distinct perspective when it comes to India, that of the reverse migrant. Holding the duality of both insider and outsider, the concepts of location, identity and culture are themes constantly challenged in her body of work. However, although frequently referencing Indian tradition and society in her work, Kher does not want to be labelled as a 'diaspora' artist, a term heavy with the weight of colonial history, and she denies her work is explicitly about herself or her country. Instead, she emphasises the universal nature of her work and its link to broader issues of humanity and history. "I am always far more interested in the viewer's journey than my own. I get my ideas from you." (as quoted on the Hauser and Wirth website)

Kher's work draws from experiences in both Eastern and Western cultures and ideas of both tradition and modernity. Working across multiple mediums, she appropriates motifs and artefacts of Indian life and imaginatively transforms their identity. Her works are often made from the ready- made, from saris to bangles, but it is her use of the bindi that she has become most known for. Beginning in 1995, Kher has used the bindi as an integral part of her work, and it has become a language that the artist has invented to articulate and animate her themes.

"The bindi is a forehead decoration traditionally made with red pigment and worn by Hindu men and women. It represents the 'third eye', the all-knowing intrinsic wisdom, and is a symbol of marital status. Recently bindis have been transformed into stick-on vinyl, disposable objects and a secular feminine fashion accessory. In Kher's work, the bindi transcends its massproduced diminutiveness and becomes a powerful stylistic and symbolic device, creating visual richness and allowing a multiplicity of meanings, including tensions inherent in shifting definitions of femininity in contemporary India." (Catalogue accompanying the exhibition Indian Highway at the Serpentine Gallery, London, 10th Dec 2008 - 22nd Feb 2009, p. 106)

Explicating the symbolism of the bindi in her work, Kher says, "The bindi is a representation of the third eye - a fantastic narrative is already built into the symbol. There's the reference to a mass action that goes on across the whole country, every single day, the act of placing a bindi on the forehead. You place something yourself upon yourself as you look at your reflection: the idea that you'll see the world differently today is affirmative…The dot is like a universe…it's so loaded and super-clichéd, it's unbelievable… It's a space in which politics, violence, sexuality, manipulation…everything goes on…There are many narratives" (Anupa Mehta, "Agent Provocateur", India 20: Conversations with Contemporary Artists, Mapin Publishing, Ahmedabad, 2007, p. 60).

'To experience Bharti's work is to enter a labyrinth of complex questions based on cultural misinterpretation, social structures and memory. Her works have a language of their own, of which the visual aspect is only a fraction of the overriding narrative'
- Kanchi Mehta
(Bharti Kher: The Macabre and the Beautifully Grotesque, Flash Art, Nov/Dec 2012, Milan IT, p. 83)

Kher uses the bindi in various sizes, shapes, and colours, to transform the surfaces of her paintings, sculptures, and installations. They can appear as stunning abstract designs of Hindu cosmology, spirals, rippling waves, sperm-like shoals, or strict, structured grids of lines. In one work, the phenomenal life-size elephant that is the skin speaks a language not its own, 2006, the fibreglass surface is intricately covered with a multitude of velvety pale bindis. It was this work that gained her international recognition, and it was dubbed by Financial Times art critic, Jackie Wullschlager, as the only 'iconic' piece of art to emerge from a spate of major 21st Century Indian art surveys.

In I Never Saw You For What You Really Are, Kher presents the viewer with a vivid constellation of numerous oversized, over-lapping, and multi-coloured opaque felt squares on a painted board. By repeating the bindi and layering and over-layering them, Kher disorientates and destabilises our notion of the motif. It is being used by the artist to both describe and to obscure. The work lies somewhere between the illusory and the hyper-realistic and one to which the viewer is hypnotically drawn. Two other striking examples similar to the present lot have been shown at leading London art galleries. The first work, The Nemesis of Nations, 2008, went on show at the Serpentine Gallery as part of their exhibition 'Indian Highway', in 2008. The second, an untitled work, was shown by Charles Saatchi in his 2010 exhibition 'The Empire Strikes Back: Indian Art Today'. Talking about the latter work Kher says 'I like that they make you think how big the head that would wear it would have to be. Like the vast sculptures of Hindu gods - or like someone with a very big ego. I think they are kind of Disney in a way, they're bright and kitsch and pop, a whole new direction from where I started.' (Kher as quoted in the article Pernilla Holmes, Connecting the Dots, Art News, April 2009, pg. 101).

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