DEDICATING MUNDANE OBJECTS TO TRANSFORMERS OF HEALING
Leading contemporary artists Bhrati Kher and Subodh Gupta dedicated their practice to COVID relief operations across India
Artist Bhrati Kher’s work gives form to quotidian life and its daily rituals in a way that reassesses and transforms their meaning to yield an air of magical realism. Subodh Gupta’s sculpture incorporates everyday objects that are ubiquitous throughout India, such as steel tiffin lunch boxes, thali pans, bicycles and milk pails. Together these two leading contemporary artists of India transform everyday objects into breathtaking sculptures that reflect on the economic transformation of their homeland.
Amidst the ongoing crisis across India, artists Bharti Kher and Subodh Gupta turn to their studios and dedicate their practice to Covid relief operations across India creating nine signature works that extend their long-standing artistic explorations of found objects and ritual within the everyday, whilst also speaking to the world of the moment. The sale began on 1 June 2021.
The U K born Kher (born in London in 1969) moved to India and she now lives and works in New Delhi. Having relocated for work she also met and subsequently married Subodh Gupta. The two met at KHOJ a workshop and hit it off famously becoming one of the important artist couples of contemporary art in India. Kher previously studied a Foundation Course in Art and Design at Middlesex Polytechnic London, and received a fine art BA in painting, with honors at Newcastle Polytechnic, United Kingdom.
Like most trained artists, Kher began with painting oil on canvas, and then moved on to sculpture. Later on, her use of found objects became informed by her own position as an artist located between geographic and social milieus.
Kher has become known for her works with Bindi, an ornament of feminine beautification within the Indian context. As a woman, her practice has displayed an unwavering relationship with the body, its narratives, and the nature of things. Derived from the Sanskrit word ‘Bindu’- meaning point, drop, dot or small particle – and rooted in ritual and philosophical traditions, the Bindi is a dot applied to the centre of the forehead as a representation of a spiritual third eye.
Her way of working is exploratory: surveying, looking, collecting, and transforming, as she repositions the viewer’s relationship with the object and initiates a dialogue between metaphysical and material pursuits.
Subodh Gupta was born in Khagaul, Bihar. He had a difficult childhood having lost his father who worked as a railway guard, at the early age of twelve. He was brought up by his mother and his uncles. At a young age after finishing school, Gupta joined a theatre group in Khagaul, where he worked as an actor. He also designed posters to advertise the plays he acted in, which is around the time he started considering a career in art.
After working part-time as an illustrator at a newspaper, he began studying art at the College of Art, Patna (1983–1988) before moving to New Delhi, where he continues to live and work. Trained as a painter, he went on to experiment with a variety of media. Gupta moved to Delhi after graduating, and struggled for several years. Early turning points in his career came from being exhibited at the Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale held at the Fukuoka Art Museum in 1999, and at the Gwangju Biennale in 2000. His association with KHOJ Studios in Delhi, an organisation that promotes young artists and experimental work; begun in this period, also influenced his career. His work has been described as being in the tradition of the French surrealist Marcel Duchamp. Then in 2006, the French art collector and businessman François Pinault bought Gupta’s sculpture Very Hungry God, a giant skull made from aluminum kitchen utensils, weighing over a thousand kilograms. It was this work that shot the artist to become one of ‘the most valuable Indian artists.’
Gupta’s sculpture incorporates everyday objects that are ubiquitous throughout India, such as steel tiffin lunch boxes, thali pans, bicycles and milk pails. From such ordinary items the artist produces breathtaking sculptures that reflect on the economic transformation of his homeland. His works investigate the sustaining and even transformational power of the everyday.
Gupta has long explored the effects of cultural translation and dislocation through his work, demonstrating art’s ability to transcend cultural and economic boundaries. His ideas have taken shape in a variety of different media, from film, video and performance to steel, bronze, marble, and paint, which He employs for both their aesthetic properties and as conceptual signifiers carrying a wealth of connotations. The mass-produced objects that have played such a prominent role in his art offer an ambiguous symbolism: while they are seen by those in the West as exotic and representative of Indian culture, to those in India they are common items that are used daily in almost every household, from the poorest to the most-wealthy. Gupta harnesses these varying associations and, in the process, makes his materials, subjects in their own right.
Through http://www.pledgebybhartiandsubodh.com/, the artists have raised about INR One Crore, which will be donated to the NGOs- Hemkunt Foundation and Goonj, for Covid-19 relief work.
Text by Shalini Passi
Image Courtesy: The artists and the representative galleries, TCC DIGITECH
Find more about the Fundraiser, Artists and Artworks:
http://www.pledgebybhartiandsubodh.com/
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2856828777902256
