Bharti Kher

Bharti Kher’s exhibition has an accordion like effect, taking the viewer on different registers. The effect is much like her vast studio in Gurgaon where objects lie in grand chaos, and the mood seems to shift on different floors. The range of materials confounds, because of the alchemical magic that she seems to tease and seduce from odd conjunctions and unfamiliar disparities.

Kher’s working process – of allusion, deflections and a personally encoded language plays through this body of work. Drawing, erasures, sculpture, bindi and encaustic forms, together what do they amount to? That the Heroides may be imprinted, gently, within the bindis, and entire maps erased and reconfigured speaks of the language of art making and its mystery. Here Kher seems to find pleasure, in drawing out the power and suggestibility of her materials. What she offers at the end, as you patiently decode her language, is the first glimpse at a self portrait. Etched between the bindis, and only faint in outline, the artist-auteur looks out at you. Now the conversation may begin.

Gayatri Sinha