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.

The title of the exhibition,