Inspired by an ancient Hinduism's "Third Eye", Bharti Kher takes on NYC

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
By Rachel Wolff

"A View of the Forest" (seen in a detail) by Bharti Kher

NEW YORK - New Delhi artist Bharti Kher, who's at the front of the pack of India's rising art stars, likes to use bindis—the small stick-on dots worn by many Indian women on their foreheads—on her sculptures of dying elephants, full-scale whale hearts and animal-woman hybrids. The bindis, on view at the artist's first New York exhibition in five years, symbolize the third eye, a mystical concept in Hinduism that Ms. Kher finds rife with storytelling potential. Ms. Kher's show, titled "The Hot Winds That Blow From the West," runs through April 14 at Hauser & Wirth Gallery. [link]

Since then, she's found international success. Ms. Kher will have a solo show at London's Parasol Unit Foundation for Contemporary Art in September; François Pinault and Charles Saatchi collect her work; and she's played prominently in nearly every major survey of contemporary Indian art held in the past 10 years. A bindi-encrusted elephant by Ms. Kher, titled "The Skin Speaks a Language Not Its Own," sold for nearly $1.5 million in 2010 at Sotheby's, then a record price for any contemporary Indian female artist at auction. (Ms. Kher also makes abstract compositions by layering thousands of bindis to form Op-art-like patterns and designs.)