Bharti Kher, 2013 Artist-in-Residence at the Gardner, was enriched and recharged by spending time thinking and living amongst the Museum’s extraordinary building and art treasures.
The focus of this show—on view in the Fenway Gallery from September 20, 2017 to September 10, 2018—is a series of drawings and notebooks Kher made during that time. All the drawings in this artist's book were made by Bharti Kher between 2013 and 2015. The drawings are very tactile, often provocative, and charged with humor and a capriciousness that is smart and mischievous at the same time. They reflect on gender and motherhood, anatomy, and the physiology of pregnancy. They speak of empathy and love while investigating the enigmatic paradoxes and ambiguities of what it means to be human.
By Bharti Kher, edited by Pieranna Cavalchini, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and Diana C Stoll 64 pages Published by the Corraini Edizioni, 2017 Hardcover 9 x 0.5 x 6 inches