Internationally acclaimed Indian artist Bharti Kher’s first Australian solo exhibition ‘In Her Own Language’ features thousands of bindis (the forehead decoration worn by women throughout South East Asia) as textured wall panels that could be microscopic views of cells in a petri dish or Hubble-like glimpses into an imploding star. ‘In Her Own Language’ - curated by Margaret Moore and presented for the Perth International Arts Festival, reveals elegant and diverse work that offers a window into Bharti’s richly textured practice.Accompanying the bindi and sari works are some of Bharti’s striking figurative sculptures. Using casts of her friends as a base, Bharti has turned women she knows into mythological goddesses that blur the line between human and animal.Bharti’s exhibition runs for eight weeks in 2016 as part the Perth International Arts Festival. The exhibition will run until 16 April 2016. Central to the exhibition is VIRUS, a commanding work of 10,000 bindis formed into a mandala. In this, and other works, viewers can witness Kher’s signature application of bindis and saris.Bharti Kher moved to live in India after completing art school. She has resided in New Delhi since; creating artwork that explores themes of culture, mythology and narrative. Her distinctive signature application of saris, bindis and figurative sculptures will be on display in a selected exhibition.Speaking about her first solo exhibition in Australia and about her creation, Bharti says, “In the bindi works there are possibilities to look at the macrocosm and microcosm, to see the relationship of our own body in the world as we live and to experience the outer body as cosmic or even otherworldly. This series of work is very much centred to the idea of the body, the cell, this idea of mutation, viruses.”Bharti’s elegant yet diverse work is part visceral and part allegory, stemming from the pulse of her New Delhi studio and informed by a curious and cognisant imperative. Figurative sculptures resist definition, dancing between mythical goddess and contemporary portraits. Cell-like orbs and ellipses of layered bindis float in fields of colour, suggesting bodily association. Inscribed rice grains invite reflection upon cultural and physical sustenance, social and linguistic attribution.Bharti is largely inspired by myths from the Greeks and Vikings to the Persians and Indians. Her Warrior with Cloak and Shield is an enigmatic female figure spectacularly crowned in antlers and banana leaf but grounded in the everyday in a pair of Mary Jane shoes.Talking about the exhibition, Perth International Arts Festival Visual arts Program Manager Margaret Moore says, “I am delighted that Kher accepted the invitation to present this exhibition at UWA for the festival in a year that will also see her work included in the Sydney Biennale, a retrospective staged by Vancouver Art Gallery and in an exhibition at the Freud Museum London.”The University Of Western Australia’s Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery has experienced record-breaking crowds attending the first full week of exhibitions for 2016.Working out of Delhi, Bharti has attracted global attention through record auction results for her remarkable work: The Skin Speaks a Language not its Own. She is also a recent recipient of the Chevalier Order of Arts and Letters. Bharti’s upcoming exhibition will be at the 20th Biennale of Sydney, titled ‘The future is already here’. Bharti is going to present a series of life-sized, seated female forms that were cast from real women in her New Delhi studio. This will be showcased at On Cockatoo Island: Embassy of the Real. Bharti sees the body as a literal and metaphorical site for the construction of ideas around gender, mythology and narrative.In this series Bharti's sitters were sex workers, paid by the artist to sit for her, in a self-conscious transaction of money and bodily experience. Throughout the process, Bharti asked herself: 'If the body can carry the memory of other bodies as well, what does this mean? Can a body carry narratives that don't belong to it?' Bharti's sculptures address the physicality and inherent vulnerability of the body and quietly challenge our perceptions of the body in contemporary culture.Bharti presented her first major solo exhibition in Shanghai back in 2014. The recurring themes within Bharti’s work are hybridity, transmogrification, ethics, gender politics, globalisation, and the interlocking relationship between animal and man. The exhibition contained work especially made for Rockbund Art Museum, including two site-specific installations that act as conceptual and literal ‘skins’ that encase the museum’s façade and merge two consecutive exhibition spaces. These installations mirror the double role of the bind—a vital motif in Bharti’s work—through its ability to decorate and attract attention, as well as to obscure the gaze.Bharti Kher: In Her Own Language runs until April 16 at the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery.Follow@ARTINFOIndia
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