Morphed Selves, Mixed Worlds

Bharti Kher’s composite creatures attract and repel at the same time, insists Meera Menezes.

- Meera Menezes

Bharti Kher. Animus Mundi. Sari, resin, metal. 204 cms x 82 cms x 137 cms. 2018. Images courtesy of the artist and Nature Morte.

It is not the sort of welcome you were expecting. A grotesque creature greets you at the entrance of Nature Morte’s Dhan Mill gallery. Exuding a raw, unbridled energy, it magnetically draws as well as repulses the unwary visitor. Part-human, part-ape, this is no Arion, one of Kher’s early hybrid women, who would have sidled up with a tray of chocolate muffins. Instead, this Strange Attractor sports a penis-like appendage, at the tip of which balances a hut with a tree. Above the head of this shapeshifter, a ring light – the kind that we have come to associate with Zoom calls – forms a halo, conferring on her a shamanistic divinity.

For several decades now, Kher has tapped into the wellsprings of mythology and evolutionary theories to create a cast of composite characters. Using the “push and pull of material and meaning,” Kher sets up discomfiting encounters that force us to question our notions of race, identity, and gender.