In her most extensive UK exhibition to date, sculptor Bhati Kher wants women to realise their full potential. A red pipe of glowing glass bangles runs horizontally through Yorkshire Sculpture Park’s Underground Gallery, replicating an artery. Walking beneath it, there’s a sense of being both inside and outside of yourself; grounded by the functional elements of our bodies, while also elevated by their connection to something greater.
This is artist Bharti Kher’s goal: to help us - women, especially - realise our unlimited potential. “I break the body to release it from itself, I cast the body so that I can take memories from the body,” Kher said during an introduction to her new exhibition, ‘Alchemies’. “It’s this sort of desperation to understand, what is the body? Who are we? And what is the potential? Is there more to me than I think? Can I walk in the clouds? Can I transverse? Is my imagination greater than the physicality of my body?” Through , Kher explores ideas of female identity and transformation, signalled by her outdoor bronze sculptures that appear divine and dream-like against the Sculpture Park's manicured greenery, crowned with clouds.
Born in London, Kher moved to Delhi in the early 90s and continues to live and work between the two countries. Indian culture is the spark at the heart of every idea, its spiritual ideologies and traditional materials used as tools for transformation - and the deconstruction of political, gender and identity .