Articulating traditional India's contemporary dilemma

Questions of her own identity and her place as a successful female artist with a western upbringing in modern Indian society are inevitably entwined into Bharti Kher's ethnographic observations of contemporary Indian life. Incidentally, the artist is a rare reverse émigré (born in London and trained in Newcastle), who moved back to India from the UK in 1992 at the age of 23, as Sotheby’s notes in its catalogue essay.

The Contemporary Art Evening Auction to be held at Sotheby's New Bond Street this 28th includes her masterful work, entitled ‘The Skin Speaks a Language not its Own’. As its inherent contradiction suggests, the title points out that inner values and outward appearance do not necessarily coalesce. The traditional rituals, social roles and gender relationships of past and present India are scrutinized from her highly unique trans-national vantage viewpoint. Bringing out the mystique and the magnificence of the work, the auction essay notes:

"In the Indian context, Bindi is a traditional mark in wedding ceremonies; the red daub on the bride's forehead (believed to have been the husband's blood in centuries past). She juxtaposes the red dot with the now endangered native Indian elephant. The animal has long been a symbol of the subcontinent. Sacred in Hindu mythology, temples are ubiquitously adorned with stone carvings of the powerful, upright beasts, which are revered in religious ceremonies in which extravagant feasts are prepared for the animals as a way of placating Ganesh, the elephant god of wealth and the granting of wishes.

"Confronting us with this sculpture laden with symbolism, ultimately Kher leaves it open to our interpretation whether India the elephant can rise up and march on as the economic global powerhouse of the future that so many predict, or whether the weight of history and the pace of change prove too much for this beast of burden, crestfallen and crippled by its own cultural contradictions which do not fit the western mould of progress."

‘The Skin Speaks…’ articulates traditional India's contemporary dilemma. India's identity soaked in all its complexities is the crux of this.