Uncertain States an interview with Bharti Kher
RAJESH PUNJ

In light of International Women’s Day, celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women, Art & Deal draws on a recent interview with one of India’s leading female artists, Bharti Kher. Whose practice impassions a cultural cannon of sentiments and sensations derived from being a woman in India now. Her exhibition at Galerie Perrotin, Paris, in late 2016 marked a moment of intellectual and inventive openness, determined by her greater artistic freedoms. By which Kher’s work explores the collective inequalities and unease of her gender. Intending with her work to challenge social and cultural norms, by empowering her practice with politics and personal ambition.


The position and plight of women is central to Kher’s work as she explains when discussing Heriodes V 2016 (part of The laws of reversed efforts exhibition, Galerie Perrotin, Paris, October19th – 23rd December 2016). Siting how poet and political exile, Pulibus Ovidius Naso, or Ovid as he would come to be know, “wrote out a series of letters that were from point of view of women. And when I first read it I thought these accounts were true, so I was incredibly excited. Asking ‘how has he got hold of these letters?’ then I realised that actually this was a fictional work, which is also really interesting because he created something. He was one of the first writers of the fourth century who wrote as a woman. Ovid as fourteen women writing letters to long lost lovers; the men who left them, that betrayed them, who went off with other women, who found other lovers. Some of those letters are angry, some of them are bitter, others are beautiful; some of them are about death. Which were collectively called Amores. And I thought wow what an amazing idea to have these poems together in one place. So I started writing them out.” And for Kher, Ovid’s literary sensibilities address a longstanding crime against the identities of women, as she insists, “men have always had the voice of women haven’t they historically”. Another work Six Women 2013 – 2015, comprised of plaster and wood, examines the personal and public prostitution of oneself.

Moreover with Kher’s work, if science is determined by a body of facts, then art, as she sees it, is closer to the fictitious. Moving between certain and uncertain states, the artist envisages our lives as they are now, and are likely to be in the future. English born, New Delhi based, Kher sees art as a situation, in a continent carried by a wealth of other interests. As her preoccupation with materials and matter is coupled by her consideration forhuman behavior, and of the manner by which we interact and exchange our skins with one another. And as positive as it proves problematic Kher sees societal advances coming at the cost of the individual. “It is strange now in India how it has become the easy option to have your sentiments hurt by art, imagery and other things, than to actually look at the real world and to find that what you are doing is extremely problematic.”

Bharti Kher sees power, progress and politics as having superseded more ephemeral energies and alliances between people that have shaped India, of the land, the hand and the individual. And of a moment when art and culture were as significant a language as the hundreds of dialects that cover the continent as sound systems. “As a consequence of what is happening socially and culturally, you realize that as cultural practitioners your voice is even more important, and as you say the art we make has to measure up to that.”

For Kher the joy of making work, the routine of walking into and out of her studio everyday comes with the knowledge that she is witness to history as it unfolds. The lives of the individual are for the artist a measure of her intention to want to explore and come to explain what it is to be in and of the modern city. Applying plastic to wood, pressing bindi’s to painted board, balancing granite over concrete, are for Kher all actions of adventure with her environment, as it is in a constant state of flux. And as an artist she sees her role less a provocateur or protagonist, but more as a witness, looking over reality with an alien eye, seeing everything anew. “As I said you act as a witness, and some of the works that have come out in the past two years, if I look at them in retrospect are really about what is happening. I am not writing a story but the imagery comes instinctively. Or the sensibility of the work, the angst and awkwardness of the piece comes from the environment, because you make work about where you live, about who you are and where you are from.” Replacing England for India, Kher sees her work as a reaction to the situations and circumstances that have multinarratives pressed side-by-side in a society and city, polluted and overpopulated. “I have lived in India for twenty-five years but my eye will always be different, but then so is everybody else’s eye.”

Interview

Rajesh Punj: I am initially interested in talking about the works you have here at Galerie Perrotin, Paris. The associated press material tells me that these are all new works for this exhibition. Can you introduce them to me?
Bharti Kher: I would say the two exhibitions I have done this past two months, would be this exhibition and the exhibition I am doing at the Freud Museum, London. You approach different projects differently. Sometimes spaces, specifically gallery spaces call for new projects that allow you to achieve something appropriate to the environment you are in.