Indian artist Bharti Kher will visit IU the week of Feb. 20 for gallery talks, giving students her critiques and a public Feb. 23 lecture, according to a Grunwald Gallery press release.
An exhibit featuring Kher’s work will be on display at Grunwald from Feb. 23 to March 23.
The series is part of IU’s “India Remixed” festival, organized by the IU Arts and Humanities Council to celebrate India’s global contributions to art and culture.
The exhibit, titled “Messengers,” includes several large-scale paintings and sculptures made from wax, cork, glass and mirrors, according to an IU press release.
Kher has presented exhibitions around the world, including at the Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum in Boston, the Freud Museum in London and the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery in Perth, Australia, according to the IU release.
Critic and curator Hans Ulrich Obrist said Kher’s exhibits convey tension between new and old India, according to the IU press release.
The London-born Kher lives and works in New Delhi, India, where she focuses much of her work around oval-shaped bindis, according to the Grunwald press release.
She uses the swirling gestures to create bindis in her paintings and sculptures.
“For Kher, the bindi—the traditional forehead dot worn by Hindu women—symbolizes a complex intersection of religious ritual, domesticity, commodity, and aesthetic beauty,” according to the release.
Kher said in the IU press release that bindis represent a sacred ritual that has become secular. She said bindis are an unbroken ritual Indian women practice each day. This ritual is as repetitive and periodic as eating.
“I take it all and run with the possibility of making image and idea look beautiful, and the bindis make the words feel strangely human,” Kher said in the press release.
Christine Fernando
