The Toxic and Devouring Tree
Akansha Rastogi concentrates on a single sculptural work titled ‘Solarum Species’ by Bharti Kher, recently presented in her solo show, ‘Absence of an Assignable Cause’ at Nature Morte, New Delhi and explains why this is a pivotal work in the artist’s career
Bharti Kher’s recent solo exhibition at Nature Morte - Absence of an Assignable Cause - articulates a lacuna that disturbs the entire system running on cause and effect dictum. In absence of a cause the effects exist in a limbo without any source, but Bharti insists on an ‘assignable cause’ that implies the presence of many causes than none. The problem here is with the ‘many’ amounting to none; and how the artist copes with it is an interesting exploration.
In the process of undoing a single fermented origin, Bharti takes a recluse in the social gestures like welcoming the expected guests/ viewers in installation Another strange encounter. The confusion prevails that whether the title refers to the viewer’s encounter with the topsy-turvy world of broken saucers and glazed samosas or to already passé event of which these witnesses stand frozen. Who and where are the actors if the event happened minutes ago before the viewer comes in and discovers the left-behind clues. And if viewers themselves are the actors, where is the missing action taking place? Operating within this halfway house situation, Bharti opens up spaces for the missing or the unaccountable.
However, I choose to bring to notice one particular work Solarum species exhibited in the show; and overview the artist’s approach and constant engagement with the ‘hybrid’. Simulating the tree of evolution often used by scientists as a diagrammatic representation to show the development of various species up to Homosapiens, Bharti Kher gardens a deadly tree within the gallery space. She employs an organic form at whose branches many animal species – the horse, wolf, boar etc grow. Made of fiber glass, this exotic tree contradicts the organic nature. With visible welded wires, the tree does look like a construct, “an engineered, and genetically modified plant”, as Bharti would prefer to call it, “suggesting something from the future”.
I want to recall a few elements from her earlier works. The hybrid beings (part-human and part-animal) caught up in familiar humane environment, engaged in chores, few in domestic spaces like Arione serving chocolate muffins, Arione’s sister just back from shopping, or a Family Portrait with a wolf-headed vaccum cleaner; or animals straight away enacting the human role like a giraffe committing suicide. There are traits of things gone awry…the normalcy code being broken or ignored… This encroaching violence shown through distortions in her digital prints, and pervading animalism acquires a subtle expression in solarum species. Colour of the tree reminds of the raw flesh, stripped of its hide that Bharti Kher has often used, but rendered in this particular work very cunningly. I admire the work as a landmark in her artistic career. The tree is toxic and devouring. One cannot fail to identify semblance with the pagan tree spirits that haunt away mankind as well as are worshipped in a different version srivriksha, the wish-fulfilling creeper. Bharti could be blamed for overuse of motifs in her earlier works. In this work solarum specie I find doing away with that loading. There is a marked difference from the artificial mannequin effect that many of her earlier sculptures-installation had.
It would be a conceit, but I can’t help relating the work to Tarkovsky’s scientific-fiction film Solaris, where solaris becomes an unscrutable space on an Ocean planet with baffling intelligence of making memories real, as if presenting an alternate reality. In their efforts to set up communication with the alien planet, the scientists on the mission encounter strange occurrences, like meeting people from their past or fantasy who appear real as they emanate from the subjective version of the scientist’s mind. Hence, the actors “trapped in their box of consciousness” are devoid of any moment of reflection. Bharti’s hybrid beings (plants or human-likes) are also trapped in the ghostly “other”, the alien struggling with its genesis. |
