Bharti Kher

(Indian, born 1969)

Bharti Kher is a contemporary British-Indian artist who works with painting, collage, photography, sculpture, and installation. Probing cultural misinterpretations with her work, Kher uses Hindu mythology and objects such as bindis (forehead decorations) as sculptural materials. The most famous example of this is in her The Skin Speaks A Language Not Its Own (2006), which features a life-sized elephant made from fiberglass and ornamented with numerous white bindis. “The less you say about some of the works the better. I think you just have to experience it,” she has explained. Born in 1969 in London, United Kingdom to Indian parents, she studied painting and design at Newcastle Polytechnic. In 1992, Kher traveled to India where she met her future husband, Indian artist Subodh Gupta, and relocated there permanently shortly afterward. Over the following decades, through her sculptures and collages Kher has created hybrid beings that unite contradictions of gender, species, race, and social role. She currently lives and works in New Delhi, Today, the artist’s works are held in the collections of the Tate Modern in London, the Vancouver Art Gallery, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, among others.