Transformation and the transformative underline life, birth, growth and inevitably death. Austrian-Hungarian novelist and writer Franz Kafka tormented his characters with ill-fated transformations, significantly Metamorphosis’ - Gregor Samsa’s change from a commoner into a life-sized cockroach. The Roman poet Ovid tells the story of Daphne and Apollo, in which Daphne transforms into a tree; her hair becoming its leaves, her arms branches and her legs roots, at the expense of Apollo’s adoration. Such cruel and incredible incarnations have come to define the work of the English-born, New Delhi-based artist Bharti Kher, whose transformations, material and metaphysical, have become part of a lifelong determination to deconstruct life’s details, for more brutal truths. Sculptural works like And all the while the benevolent slept (2008), Warrior with cloak and shield (2008), Benazir (2017-21), The Alchemist (2024) and Ghost (2024), which Kher has brought together for the first time in the central space at Yorkshire Sculpture Park for her exhibition Bharti Kher: Alchemies, appear as the physical phenomena of her earlier hybrid images. In these digital images from 2004, humans and animals are combined in collages that use notions of beauty and self-adoration for a deeper examination of oneself. The exhibition is supported by the Henry Moore Foundation, the Bharti Kher Supporters’ Circle, the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, Delhi, RMZ Foundation, Hauser & Wirth, Nature Morte, Perrotin and Girlfriend Fund.

As confident with abstraction—exemplified by pieces like The hot winds that blow from the west (2011) and The deaf room (2001-2012)—as Kher is with her embodiments of the female form, her work as she sees it is an attempt to free something from itself - breaking open the readymade and the real to conceive of works that have undergone extraordinary change, as rupture serves as her reward. Through her explorations, Kher invites us to contemplate those forces that shape both our inner worlds and the physical realm around us, suggesting that change is not only inevitable but also integral to the experience of life itself. Kher spoke to STIR about the significance of her Yorkshire Sculpture Park exhibition and creating incarnations that will likely outlive us all. Excerpts from the interview below. 

Rajesh Punj: I attended Alchemies later than everyone else, giving me the audience’s perspective on the works. What surprised me was the choice of works, some of which I had not seen before, possibly less obvious choices from your signature works, and then the relationship of the abstract with the figurative. What was your intention with this exhibition?   

Bharti Kher: Being in London but not always living in London, going to the Sculpture Park several times to learn about its history, the number of exhibitions they have had, and significantly their seriousness and dedication to sculpture, proved crucial to how I would approve the exhibition. I was so excited with everything leading up to the opening in June and I think I had one of the best installations I've ever had. I loved every minute of it. I made a show, and I said, "Okay I want to do this and so I think I'm going to do this," and I knew quite quickly that I wanted the women’s sculptures elevated onto an elongated plinth in the middle space and to have all of them together.

Rajesh: For the way they are exhibited, I saw them almost as museum pieces – those that are classified as much as they are curious. I wanted to ask about transformation, in relation to the works but also on so many levels, ‘material’, ‘physical’, ‘emotional’ – and your understanding of that.

Bharti: There are so many as you rightly say. Of the practical, there's the studio work but then there's also the metaphysical. I see myself as an alchemist interested in animism, in understanding how something can be more than the sum of its parts. Animism considers all things to have an essence. That everything has its own centre of being and they're all, in some way, individual energies, aren't they? So, everything is animated and it’s about the distinctions that we place between spiritual and physical worlds, and my studio world is the same. I don't know whether you call it consciousness or the interplay between worlds. I am always looking to create arcs between objects and marking space with vortexes into deeper spaces. I see it as a disruption, and I am a disruptor of objects.

Sculpture is a dance in space, creating lines of energy, when everything comes together. – Bharti Kher

Rajesh: You said something very purposeful about transformation, which I wrote down. That "when you break something, you free it of itself". Which is interesting, for the deconstruction or reincarnation of something for something else.

Bharti: They are like doors, aren't they? You can use so many metaphors and I thrive on those associations because you can see it in the narrative of my work. So, you can open doors and then you have to go through them, to see further into the work. When I make an object, it is as much about considering its negation, describing the presence and absence of something or a person and I use that as a tool a great deal in my work. I talk about things that aren't there by describing what is around the work, of its aura and atmosphere and try to make the space around the object as animated as possible by creating these arcs within the work, or of objects that feel like they're pushing up against something else where there is a grist or force to it. For me, those opposing energies must constantly be at play within the work and, as you mentioned, when you open something you free it from itself.

Rajesh: Does freeing something from itself transform its presence?

Bharti: That is my work. I free the object from itself, exhausting it of itself.  As with many kinds of material in the studio, I can think of taking wax or plaster and deciding to make a mask. I'm going to recreate your body and for that, I cover you in plaster and then I intend to use the plaster as a revealer. Then I use the plaster as a receiver and even as a transmitter. Essentially, you're taking the object or the material and you apply and push it in many different directions, so that it becomes a composite of itself. Then when you open it you know. So many people say I break things, which I do, but I'm not actually breaking them, I'm opening them up to be able to activate them. Sometimes, if they don't break or open, I do break them, hitting them to smash them open, even dropping them because then they do things that I could never possibly imagine. It is about trusting the material but it is also dance, right? Sculpture is a dance in space, creating lines of energy, when everything comes together. But you're also choreographing it and not fearing material because it's also about allowing yourself to make bad work.

Rajesh: I wanted to ask you about failure and falling short and how that applies to you.

Bharti: Something I was taught at school by my art teacher, was that there's no such thing as finished artwork and you can keep working on something probably for the rest of your life, which is why for someone like me, it's important that the works leave the studio. Otherwise, I would keep coming back to them forever, adiantum; but also, that’s it’s just stuff.

Rajesh: I can envisage the external pressures to produce work for so many platforms, galleries, museums and institutions and therefore I always admire artists who say they are insistent on being patient and of the development of a work over time. I imagine you seek that too.

Bharti: This is our great privilege, isn't it – to be an artist? I feel so lucky every day, thanking my ancestors and spirit guide every day that I get to do this every day. To go to my studio and do what I love doing because I love making art, as much as I love being in the studio. I am there every day and I've been coming every day for 30 years. I create a lot of work, so there's time and space for objects to lie around for a while. The bindi works have become one separate section of the studio, which you wouldn’t have seen at the Sculpture Park. Then there are the sculptures and now I have started painting again.

Rajesh: Is it that you approach more than one work at the same time?

Bharti: I constantly move around the studio and can work on many things simultaneously; probably 15 works at any given moment and they're all at different levels of completion. I can't say what it's like for anyone else but this is how I work and it works for me. There isn't a golden rule to how I work, I think about many things at the same time and I also read like that. I never finish a book, I can choose to read many different things at the same time, coming back to them a year later, often starting them again and it is the same with my work. If I don't finish a project, it doesn't bother me. If I fail with a project that I feel is a failure now, it's not that I let it go, I will hold onto it. I know the work isn’t ready yet and when it is it will tell me. Even if it's seven or 10 years later, I will still come back to work.

Rajesh: For the length of time a work takes, do you see them as autobiographical; as so much an investment of you?

Bharti: I think art has the power to transform the ordinary into something more profound. Many of the works are autobiographical, for sure. I mean, even if I spent 15 years saying otherwise because at the time I was more defensive about it, we are all human. I think art has been an important way to understand myself and to understand my inner world. I think being an artist is important for me to be better connected to myself and it allows me to read, think and make sense of the world; to continue to be curious and want to learn. I've looked at so much art throughout my life. It's been such a privilege and it gives me so much joy. I love looking. I love art. I love other people's art. There's so much to understand of beauty, the sublime and pain; there’s just so much, so much to think about.

Rajesh: Do you feel that you understand yourself better for all the work that you've done? Has everything brought you closer to yourself?

Bharti: We are all on these constant journeys, but do we understand ourselves? No, because we are constantly changing, aren't we? Five years ago, it was not who I am today and I think the trick is to live and understand humanity. We are all flawed and our cells change every 40 or so days, with our becoming completely new people. Your body is extraordinary. It looks after itself and much of what I suppose I have learnt is to trust my body because I believe in my hands and my eyes, and I trust my sightline. When I make a work, I don't know how to explain it but it is quite intuitive.