Autumn 2022 at Arnolfini sees internationally renowned artist Bharti Kher return to the southwest, with a major solo exhibition exploring her alchemical practice through drawing, sculpture and the spaces in between.
The Body is a Place follows the unveiling of Kher’s 18-foot-tall painted bronze sculpture Ancestor in New York in September 2022, and her celebrated installation at this year’s Venice Biennale in the lyrical setting of The Conservatorio di Musica Benedetto Marcello.
A collector of material and meaning, Kher gathers words and marks, filling the Arnolfini like the ‘clean white page’ of one her numerous sketchbooks and diaries, sharing the ‘hand-brain-body-art-language’ which weaves throughout her two and three-dimensional forms.
Featuring a body of previously unseen drawings, created during residencies in Somerset in 2017 and 2019, The Body is a Place reveals the cyclical nature of Kher’s work. Looking at drawing as part of a wider practice which gathers ‘a world of objects and a world of words’, the exhibition furthers our understanding of an artist who simultaneously straddles magical, mythical, and scientific realms.
Kher’s intuitive practice also brings into play the bodily senses – ‘I hear it, taste it, eat it, write it, draw it’ – describing drawing as a means of ‘knowing’; an idea that lies at the heart of this exhibition, encouraging audiences to adopt the artist’s own curiosity in feeling out narratives amidst her drawings and sculpture.
The Body is a Place also features Kher’s monumental bindi drawings and the installation Links in a chain, which playfully exchanges word and image. There is quiet solitude to her Chimera casts, in which the artist buries ‘the secrets of the soul’ under layers of wax and plaster; and the impossible shapes and forms of her ‘balance’ sculptures. Alongside is a new, large-scale, site-specific iteration of Virus; conceived in 2010 and executed annually as a 30-year project incorporating her bindi drawings and text, it offers an intimate portal into Kher’s world.
The exhibition is accompanied by a new publication exploring Kher’s visual language, interweaving an introduction and conversation between the artist and curator Gemma Brace. It features essays from art historian Jo Baring, and director of the Drawing Room Kate Macfarlane, alongside over 60 images, with new work and intimate photos of the artist’s studio.
The exhibition will be open Tuesday to Sunday each week, 11am to 6pm, entry is free, with bookings available in advance via arnolfini.org.uk.
Bharti Kher is represented internationally by Hauser & Wirth, Perrotin, and Nature Morte.
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