.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
“The bindi, or tikka, is the symbol par excellence of Indian femininity. It’s so simple – a red dot on the forehead. Nothing more complicated, you’d have thought, than a full stop. It says ‘I’m a woman’ and ‘I’m an Indian’. Straightforward sentences, and yet there are few more complex ideas than gender and nationality” (A. Roy, ‘From Third Eye to Second Skin: Some notes on the Bindi’, Bing, no. 9, Paris, December 2008 – April 2009, p. 22).
Bharti Kher began working with bindis in 1992 following what she describes as a ‘supernova’ moment when she came across a woman in India wearing a serpent shaped bindi on her forehead. The bindi has gone through its own evolution over the years, transforming from a simple adornment for married women to an aesthetic choice that addresses questions of gender, nationality and identity. Kher takes up these questions in her work, combining them with the notions of the ‘third eye’ and enlightenment that bindis also suggest. As the artist notes, “In India, when you go to people’s bathrooms, you will see bindis on the mirrors, because women take them off and stick them there at the end of the day. And then that bindi is the witness of the day and the life of this person. It has been everywhere, it has heard everything. And it’s just a piece of sticky fabric” (Artist statement, R. Wolff, ‘Inspired by an Ancient Hindu Sign’, The Wall Street Journal, 9 March 2012).
Kher uses the bindi not as the focus of her work, but as a material and medium already rich with meaning. With the help of several female studio assistants, the artist collates thousands of bindis in her paintings and sculptures to create abstract patterns with great fluidity and rhythm. In the present lot, evocatively titled The Gravy Train, the artist uses three large panels to invite the viewer into a space in which immersive fields of bindis flowing in vertical lines inspire introspection and meditation. Here, glittery black, red and green bindis are layered in unique combinations and with different intervals across each of the three panels, creating distinctive rhythmic patterns on each. On closer inspection, however, each bindi can also be seen individually, as an essential part of a convoy, without which its journey would not be complete. The title of the work, The Gravy Train, may also allude to those who reap the profits of the consumerism, mass production and fast fashion that the bindi now represents.
This year, a monumental sculpture by Kher, Ancestor, commissioned by the Public Art Fund and supported by the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, was displayed at the southeast corner of Central Park, New York. In the recent past, Kher’s works have been featured in a multitude of institutional solo and group exhibitions including those at the Design Museum and Tate Modern, London; Arnolfini, Bristol; the Irish Museum of Modern Art; the Vancouver Art Gallery; the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston; the Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai; the Arken Museum of Modern Art, Denmark; the Tel Aviv Museum of Art; Centre Pompidou, Paris; and at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington D.C.
Bharti Kher began working with bindis in 1992 following what she describes as a ‘supernova’ moment when she came across a woman in India wearing a serpent shaped bindi on her forehead. The bindi has gone through its own evolution over the years, transforming from a simple adornment for married women to an aesthetic choice that addresses questions of gender, nationality and identity. Kher takes up these questions in her work, combining them with the notions of the ‘third eye’ and enlightenment that bindis also suggest. As the artist notes, “In India, when you go to people’s bathrooms, you will see bindis on the mirrors, because women take them off and stick them there at the end of the day. And then that bindi is the witness of the day and the life of this person. It has been everywhere, it has heard everything. And it’s just a piece of sticky fabric” (Artist statement, R. Wolff, ‘Inspired by an Ancient Hindu Sign’, The Wall Street Journal, 9 March 2012).
Kher uses the bindi not as the focus of her work, but as a material and medium already rich with meaning. With the help of several female studio assistants, the artist collates thousands of bindis in her paintings and sculptures to create abstract patterns with great fluidity and rhythm. In the present lot, evocatively titled The Gravy Train, the artist uses three large panels to invite the viewer into a space in which immersive fields of bindis flowing in vertical lines inspire introspection and meditation. Here, glittery black, red and green bindis are layered in unique combinations and with different intervals across each of the three panels, creating distinctive rhythmic patterns on each. On closer inspection, however, each bindi can also be seen individually, as an essential part of a convoy, without which its journey would not be complete. The title of the work, The Gravy Train, may also allude to those who reap the profits of the consumerism, mass production and fast fashion that the bindi now represents.
This year, a monumental sculpture by Kher, Ancestor, commissioned by the Public Art Fund and supported by the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, was displayed at the southeast corner of Central Park, New York. In the recent past, Kher’s works have been featured in a multitude of institutional solo and group exhibitions including those at the Design Museum and Tate Modern, London; Arnolfini, Bristol; the Irish Museum of Modern Art; the Vancouver Art Gallery; the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston; the Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai; the Arken Museum of Modern Art, Denmark; the Tel Aviv Museum of Art; Centre Pompidou, Paris; and at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington D.C.