Bharti Kher - Property from The Vanmoerkerke Collection, Belgium London Wednesday, April 2, 2008 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Jack Shainman Gallery, New York

  • Catalogue Essay

    Bharti Kher appropriates the popular Indian icon of the bindi in her work, creating a second skin on her canvases and sculptures by arranging hundreds of the readymade objects across their surfaces. Originally conceived as a painted red circle on the forehead of married Indian women, the bindi represents the all-seeing third eye of Shiva and stood for the knowledge bestowed upon married couples in their union. Today, the bindi, now commercially manufactured, has been widely popularized and is worn by women of differing marital statuses and various religions. In using the bindis as a readymade, Kher suggests the transgression of the bindi from a significant religious symbol to a decorative one, now universally identified with Indian culture.  The bindis also serve a dual purpose in cleverly infusing a “South Asian” presence into her elegant and otherwise ethnically un-suggestive abstractions. Born in London, Bharti Kher moved to India in 1993 and her work draws from her experiences in negotiating between both Eastern and Western cultures.

53

Landscape

2007
Triptych: bindis on painted wooden panels.
74 1/4 x 74 1/4 in. (188.6 x 188.6 cm) each.
Signed and dated "Bharti Kher 2007" on the reverse of each panel.

Estimate
£40,000 - 60,000 

Sold for £198,500

Property from The Vanmoerkerke Collection, Belgium

3 Apr 2008, 4pm
London