By Emily Burkhart
October 27, 2023
Bharti Kher (b. 1969), The Skin Speaks A Language Not Its Own, 2006.Bindis on fiberglass, 55 ⅞ x 180 x 76 in. Image courtesy of MutualArt.
“The bindis play with the visual aesthetic and conceptual ideas that I have been pushing
for many years now: the bindi as an object of ritual (the sacred now turned secular),
of conceptual clarity (as the third eye) and brazen habit.”
-Bharti Kher
Bharti Kher is one of India’s preeminent contemporary artists. Known especially for her sculptural work, Kher’s diverse oeuvre includes painting, installation, and photography as well. Central to her practice is the use of found materials but particularly the bindi, a traditional circular mark applied to the forehead between the eyes by Hindu women. Since 1995, when she discovered what can be described as pollywog or sperm-shaped bindis in a New Delhi marketplace, Kher has employed the bindi as an artistic medium in works such as I’ve seen an Elephant Fly (2002), It’s a Jungle Out There (2002), The Skin Speaks A Language Not Its Own (2006), and An Absence of Assignable Cause (2007). The bindi has become one of her signature materials and adorns, often by the thousands, many of her most recognizable works.
Conventionally, Hindu women wear a red bindi to signify that they are married and a black bindi if widowed. Bindis also represent the “third eye” of spiritual wisdom or divine insight.
In recent years, though, the bindi has lost religious and social significance among those who have adopted it for aesthetic purposes. Indeed, bindis have become such fashionable cosmetic accessories that they are now available in a wide variety of colors and shapes. Still, as Kher explains:
The application of the bindi represents an unbroken ritual practiced daily by
millions of Indian women and has been described by anthropologist Marcel
Mauss as “techniques of the body,” which, like other physical disciplines
such as consumption and eating, are repetitive and periodic. I take it all
and run with the possibility of making image and idea look beautiful and
the bindis make the works feel strangely human.
Bharti Kher, photo by Jeetin Sharm © Hauser & Wirth. Image courtesy of The Bristol Magazine.
Kher was raised in London, England, where she was born into a Hindu family in 1969. She studied at Middlesex Polytechnic, London, from 1987-1988 and then Newcastle Polytechnic from 1988-1991, graduating with honors and receiving a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Art and Painting in 1991. The following year, she traveled to India, moving to New Delhi in 1993 at the age of 23, where she continues to live and work. She is married to the Indian artist Subodh Gupta (b. 1964) with whom she shares two children.
I've seen an Elephant Fly (2002)
Bharti Kher (b. 1969), I’ve seen an Elephant Fly, 2002. Acrylic, felt, and vinyl bindis on fiberglass, 72 x 43 x 20 in. Image courtesy of Artnet .
One of Kher’s earliest sculptural pieces, I’ve seen an Elephant Fly (2002), portrays an inquisitive young elephant, standing with its trunk nearly grazing the ground. Countless silvery-gray, sperm-shaped bindi comprise the elephant’s skin making the sculpture seem a living, breathing thing. Elephants in India hold deep cultural and spiritual significance. In fact, elephants are sacred symbols of peace, mental strength, and power. The Hindu god Ganesha, said to be a remover of obstacles and a provider of fortune and good luck, is envisioned with an elephant head and a human-like body. Thus, elephants are believed to be an incarnation or representation of Ganesha. Further, Indra, god of rain, thunder, and lightning, has a white elephant as a mount, establishing elephants as a symbol of divinity and royalty. Employing the bindi on this sculpture enhances the meaning of the elephant by not only suggesting tradition but India itself, its multitudes and, of course, both feminine and masculine strength.
It's a Jungle Out There (2002)
Bharti Kher (b. 1969), It’s a Jungle Out There, 2002. Bindis on fiberglass, 75 and 68 in.
in height. Image courtesy of theArchives of Women Artists, Research, and Exhibitions.
Kher’s sculptural work entitled It’s a Jungle Out There, also from 2002, consists of two tree-like structures, one slightly taller and more narrow, the other somewhat thicker with a large rounded top. The vegetal-like growths or “trees” in It’s a Jungle Out There are covered in bindis on a largely taupe or ashen surface with patches or swirls of red, white and yellow. It is difficult to know if the two growths are thriving or struggling to live. Or, as has been suggested elsewhere, they may portray the male and female principles of life. The work seems inscrutable. The word “jungle” certainly is a metaphor for situations that are unruly or lawless, or where the only law is perceived to be survival of the fittest. Since violence and death are frequent themes in Kher’s work, perhaps the red on the “trees” may be blood, an allusion to the ecological destruction wrought by humans on rainforests and wetlands in India and across the world.
The Skin Speaks A Language Not Its Own (2006)
Bharti Kher (b. 1969), The Skin Speaks A Language Not Its Own, 2006. Bindis on fiberglass, 55 ⅞ x 180 x 76¾ in. Image courtesy of MutualArt.
Bharti Kher (b. 1969), The Skin Speaks A Language Not Its Own, 2006 (detail). Image courtesy of Bharti Kher.
In contrast to the innocence of the calf in I’ve seen an Elephant Fly, The Skin Speaks A Language Not Its Own (2006) portrays an adult elephant lying on its side. There is an air of sadness to the work. We do not know for sure if the animal is exhausted, sickened, sleeping, or dying. Its skin is also composed of multitudes of hand-applied, silvery-gray, sperm-shaped bindis, but this elephant seems to represent the darker side of the treatment of elephants in India, “the birthplace of taming elephants for the use of humans.”
Captive elephants are often mistreated, stolen from their families, beaten [and] whipped into compliance to be employed in Hindu temples, religious festivals, pageants, or worked for other purposes. According to the BBC, India holds more than 4,000 elephants in captivity where they are apt to be subjected to physical abuse, fed a poor diet, and shackled to stone floors. Kher’s The Skin Speaks A Language Not Its Own may represent the suffering of India’s captive elephants. It has also been suggested that the elephant symbolizes India and, much like the dilution of meaning of the bindi itself, it represents “the potentially destructive effects of popular culture, mass media and consumerism on the culture of India.”
Whatever meaning ascribed to The Skin Speaks A Language Not Its Own, it has the distinction of being the work that made Kher an internationally recognized artist. In 2013, it sold for $1,785,000 at Christie’s New York, setting an auction record price for a contemporary Indian work.
An Absence of Assignable Cause (2007)
Bharti Kher (b. 1969), An Absence of Assignable Cause, 2007. Bindis on fiberglass, 68¼ x 109¼ x 45¾ in. Image courtesy of Nature Morte Gallery, India.
Bharti Kher (b. 1969), An Absence of Assignable Cause, 2007. Saatchi Gallery, London, 2010. Image courtesy of Flickr.
In 2010, a major contemporary art exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery in London called The Empire Strikes Back: Indian Art Today featured Kher’s work. Her massive fiberglass sculpture, An Absence of Assignable Cause (2007), was one of the pieces exhibited. Unable to find anatomically correct information, Kher nevertheless depicts the imagined, life-sized appearance of the two-chambered heart of a blue-sperm whale. The surface of this sculpture is once again composed of bindis complete with undulating green and red circular bindis arranged to form blood vessels, veins and arteries. One of Kher’s inspirations is the macabre with which she combines traditional beauty while alluding to the endangered extinction status of the whale or of India, a country the size of a whale.
Exhibitions And Accolades
Bharti Kher has been exhibited in solo shows worldwide, including the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston; the Freud Museum, London; the Vancouver Art Gallery, Canada; and the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, Perth, Australia. Her work has been included in numerous group exhibitions as well. Considered “one of the superstars of Indian Contemporary Art” Kher was the subject of a mid-career retrospective at the Rockbund Art Museum in Shanghai, China, in 2014. She was awarded the Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters) by France in 2015 and the ARKEN Prize by Denmark in 2010. In India, she was named YFLO (Young Ficci Ladies Organization) Delhi Woman Achiever of the Year in 2007, and awarded the prestigious Sanskriti Award in Art in 2003. Kher is represented by Hauser & Wirth in New York and London and by Nature Morte in New Delhi.
Photo of Bharti Kher working. Image courtesy of Archives of Women Artists, Research,
If you enjoyed this article on Bharti Kher, please like and share it. To learn more about Kher’s work, visit her website here.