Bharti Kher: Always an alchemist at heart
Ancestor (2022) looms high. This mother figure with heads of 23 children emerging from her body puts the female form front and centre. The artist had been commissioned to make this 18ft-tall painted bronze work, to be placed at the southeast entrance of New York’s Central Park—it was displayed therefrom 8 September 2022 to 27 August 2023—after she had been recovering from long covid.
Thus to her, this figure ended up becoming a symbol of nurturing and refuge, while the multiple heads embodied pluralism and multiculturalism. Kher, who lives between the UK and India, has described the female form in this sculpture as a keeper of memories, and “a vessel for you to travel into the future, a guide to search and honour our past histories". And now Ancestor forms part of a major solo exhibition, Bharti Kher: Alchemies—her most extensive UK museum presentation so far—which represents different approaches and periods of her career.
The works on showcase, created between 2000-24, highlight her ongoing engagement with the notions of identity and gender, particularly the female body and its experience. “She presents the woman as mother, sex worker, monster, warrior, and deity, often hybridised with animals or as avatars of the goddess. Her mythical characters blur the boundaries between humankind, nature and narrative, revealing expansive potential and new meaning," states the exhibition note.
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