BHARTI KHER

Early Years and Background

Kher studied painting at Middlesex Polytechnic and Newcastle Polytechnic in London, graduating in 1991, before relocating to New Delhi, India, in 1993, where she continues to live and work. Her bicultural upbringing and experience of migration deeply inform her approach to art, blending traditions, mythologies, and contemporary concerns with social, gender, and material identities.

Bharti Kher Artworks

Bharti Kher’s works often interrogate transformation, hybridity, and the interplay of human and animal forms. Her practice is anchored by the motif of the bindi—a culturally significant marker of femininity and spirituality in South Asia—which she obsessively deploys across paintings, sculpture, and installations. Celebrated works include:

• The Skin Speaks a Language Not Its Own (2006): A monumental sculpture of a female elephant, covered with thousands of sperm-shaped bindis, highlighting themes of tradition, loss, and globalisation.
• Intermediaries Series: Shattered and reassembled clay figures form fantastical hybrids, reflecting on transformation and cultural mythology.
• Ancestor (2022): An 18-foot-tall bronze public commission shown in New York, symbolising motherhood, migration, and plural identity.

Her hybrid creations—combining human, animal, and mythical elements—question the binaries between species, gender, and social identity, often challenging conventional views with both abstraction and deeply narrative forms.

Select Public Commissions

• Ancestor (2022, Public Art Fund, New York City).
• Target Queen (2024–27, Hayward Gallery, London), a monumental outdoor commission transforming architectural facades with bindi motifs.

Awards and Accolades

• Sanskriti Award for Art (India, 2003).
• ARKEN Art Prize (Denmark, 2010).
• Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France’s highest cultural honour (2015).

Bharti Kher Exhibitions

Solo Exhibitions

• Alchemies, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, UK (2025).
• Mythologies, Thorvaldsen’s Museum, Denmark (2025—26).
• Target Queen, Hayward Gallery, London (2024—27).
• The Body is a Place, Arnolfini, Bristol (2022).
• A Wonderful Anarchy, Hauser & Wirth Somerset, UK (2019).

Group Exhibitions

• Venice Biennale, Parasol Unit, London (2022).
• Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India (2014).
• Guggenheim Abu Dhabi: Seeing Through Light (2014).

Website and Instagram

Bharti Kher’s website can be found at bhartikher.com, and her Instagram is @bharti_kher_studio_.

Bharti Kher FAQs

Ocula | 2025