Bharti Kher. Ancestor

About

Bharti Kher (b. 1969, London, United Kingdom) connects New Delhi and New York City with this nearly eighteen-foot-tall bronze universal mother figure, her most ambitious artwork to date. Its source is a miniature statue from the artist’s “Intermediaries” series, assembled by recomposing broken clay figurines. Kher finds these small objects in secondhand markets in India, where she moved in 1992 after being raised and educated in the United Kingdom.

This colossal sculpture reflects Kher’s cross-cultural identity and her appreciation for India’s rich material culture. Every meaning-laden detail and distressed surface of the original hand-crafted object has been meticulously magnified to reflect the journey of this matriarch’s creation. In contrast to urban statuary that commemorates historic individuals or events, Ancestor enters the public space as an allegorical representation paying homage to both the generations that came before and those to follow. Kher’s temporary monument echoes the spirit of the Statue of Liberty. She is an empowered force fostering a diverse community—a hybrid figure whose symbolic references to multiculturalism and plurality embody the possibility of an interconnected space of belonging and care.

The exhibition is curated by Public Art Fund Adjunct Curator, Daniel S. Palmer, PhD

Ancestor is commissioned by Public Art Fund, New York, and is in the collection of the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi.