Must-See: Bharti Kher’s Hybrid Sculptures

This review is part of a new series of Must-See shows, in which a writer delivers a snapshot of a current exhibition  

Responding to postcolonial power structures, the hybrid pieces in Bharti Kher’s survey exhibition at Yorkshire Sculpture Park position gender and identity as sites of revolt where ideological thinking can be shaped and shifted. Featuring works spanning nearly 25 years, ‘Alchemies’ reconstructs the artist’s experience as an ‘outsider’ growing up as part of the Indian diaspora in the UK before relocating to India as an ‘expat’. Kher’s figures and bindi-abstractions split representational signs to elicit a sense of foreignness, refusing to belong to a singular space or time.

In the gardens stand four large-scale, patinated-bronze sculptures from Kher’s ‘Intermediaries’ series (2018–ongoing), reinterpreting South Indian golu dolls used in ritual domestic displays during the autumn festival of Navratri. Ancestor (2022), for instance, replicates an archetypical image of Mother India, dressed in a pleated red sari and carrying a lotus bud in her hand. The surface of her body has ruptured, giving rise to a mass of youthful heads, symbolizing the cumulative lessons passed on from warrior women across generations. Elsewhere, The Intermediary Family (2018) dislocates markers of gender norms by embracing the mythological concept of Ardhanārīśvar – a half-woman, half-man deity split at the seam – to create a tripartite entity that is part male, part female, part child. Kher’s hybrid forms embody what is lost in the slippage between cultural difference and patriarchal control.

In the Underground Gallery, Kher continues to blur history and mythology. And All the While the Benevolent Slept (2008) depicts Chinnamastā – a beheaded manifestation of the Mother Goddess – sitting crouched on her haunches, holding a bindi-encrusted fossilized skull in one hand and a reconstituted teacup with teeth in the other. Warrior with Cloak and Shield (2008) and Cloud Walker (2013) – oneiric female nudes cast in plaster and hued fiberglass – enact, respectively, Greco-Roman and Yogic postures. Extending their anatomical form through resin-soaked fabrics, and integrating every-day objects such as a rake for protection and a palm leaf as a shield, the artist intertwines signs of ancient knowledge alongside guerrilla survival strategies, reclaiming the femme hybrid as a site of resistance. Voicing the unspeakable realities of women in cultures in transition, Kher’s mutated figures stand outside the limitations of propriety, disavowing domestic and religious expectations to advocate for a revolutionary consciousness.

Bharti Kher’s ‘Alchemies’ is on view at Yorkshire Sculpture Park until 27 April 2025

_{Main image: Bharti Kher, Warrior with Cloak and Shield, 2008, resin, banana leaf, cotton, stainless steel,  241 × 170 × 196 cm. Courtesy: © Bharti Kher and Hauser & Wirth; photograph: © Stefan Altenburger Photography Zürich}