Huma Bhabha
Against Time
19 September 2020 – 21 February 2021 Everything changed perspective, in a flash he felt the euphoria of discovery, a subtle nausea, a mortal melancholy. But also a sense of infinite liberation, as when we finally understand something we’d known all along and didn’t want to know: it wasn’t the already-seen that was swallowing him in a never-lived past, he instead was capturing it in a future yet to be lived. Antonio Tabucchi, Against Time, 2009 Huma Bhabha’s sculptures, photographs, and drawings focus mainly on the figure, exploring what the artist describes as the ‘eternal themes’ of war, colonialism, displacement and memories of home. This exhibition at BALTIC comprises gigantic bodies, limbs and torsos made from clay, bronze, Styrofoam and cork, alongside portrait-heads drawn in pastel, acrylic and ink. The bodies we encounter are not always human; there are hybrid forms that fuse human with animal, and strange, mutated creatures that seem otherworldly and alien, time travellers from a distant past or an imagined future. Born in Karachi, Bhabha grew up in a residential area close to the city beach. Her works are strongly shaped by the desert landscape and the architecture of urban sprawl; her drawings, collages and prints feature images of the ruined, abandoned or undeveloped places she has photographed during her frequent visits to Pakistan. Her sculptures are layered and stacked like buildings with their foundations and armatures half-exposed. When the artist moved to America to study fine art, the colossal height of the skyscrapers brought about a new sense of scale. Bhabha’s wide range of inspirations reveal her extensive knowledge of art history, zigzagging across time; from African art, Classicism, Cubism and German Expressionism, to the Italian movement of Arte Povera (‘Poor Art’) and the work of her contemporaries. Her works frequently revisit the ruins of antiquity and the ancient statues of lost civilisations. The cinematic is always present, and her love of film, particularly science fiction and horror, remains an enduring influence, as does her fascination with special effects, the theatrical and grotesque. As a sculptor Bhabha is self-taught. Her choice of materials such as cork and Styrofoam is distinctive. Her mixed media sculptures combine clay with found materials, such as wood, plastic, chicken wire and rubber tyres. She describes the anatomy of her figures using acrylic and oil stick, with exaggerated musculature and caricatured features. In her photo-drawings and expressive works on paper, Bhabha uses collage elements from wildlife calendars, cannabis magazines, newspapers and art invitations. Her recycling of these materials is economical, but also speaks strongly of her concerns for the environment at a time of great ecological change.
1 Untitled, 2007 C-print Edition of 1, 1 AP Courtesy the artist and Salon 94, New York
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2 Untitled, 2007 C-print Edition of 1, 1 AP Courtesy the artist and Salon 94, New York 21
3 Atlas, 2015 Rubber tyres, metal Courtesy the artist and Salon 94, New York 4 Call at Will, 2009 Clay, wire, Styrofoam, wood, steel, acrylic paint Private Collection, London
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8 Cargo Tomb, 2005 Clay, wire, Styrofoam, wood, horn Collection of Huma Bhabha
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9 Ripley, 2011 Styrofoam, clay, wire, acrylic paint, wood, newsprint, China marker Private Collection, New York 10 Untitled, 2013 Ink, acrylic paint and collage on black and white print Private Collection, London 11 Untitled, 2011 Ink on C-print Courtesy the artist and Salon 94, New York
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6 Untitled, 2006 Styrofoam, clay, wire, acrylic paint Courtesy Peter Blum Gallery, New York 7 Untitled (bronze feet), 2007 Cast bronze Edition 8 of 8, 3 APs Collection of Patrick and David Freche
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5 Once, 2016 Clay, wire, Styrofoam, marble, acrylic paint, wire mesh, wood, brass, feather Courtesy the artist and Salon 94, New York
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12 Untitled, 2013 Ink and pastel on paper Courtesy the artist and Salon 94, New York 13 Untitled, 2013 Ink and pastel on paper Collection of Huma Bhabha 14 The Joke, 2013–14 Lacquered bronze Edition of 1 of 4, 1 AP Courtesy the artist and Salon 94, New York
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15 It’s Me, 2013 Cork, Styrofoam, acrylic paint, oil stick, lipstick ISelf Collection
16 In the Shadow of the Sun, 2016 Cork, Styrofoam, acrylic paint, oil stick Private Collection, London 17 Castle of the Daughter, 2016 Cork, Styrofoam, acrylic paint, oil stick, wood Private Collection, London 18 What is Love, 2013 Cork, Styrofoam, acrylic paint, oil stick, lipstick Private Collection, London 19 Untitled, 2010 Cork, wood, acrylic paint Private Collection, London 20 Reconstructions, 2007 Portfolio of sixteen photogravures and two woodblock prints Courtesy Peter Blum Edition, New York 21 Untitled, 2017 Ink, collage, acrylic paint and oil stick on colour photograph Courtesy the artist and Salon 94, New York 22–30 All works Untitled, 2009 Ink on black and white photographs David Roberts Collection, London 31 Receiver, 2019 Bronze Edition of 3 of 4, 2 APs Courtesy the artist and Salon 94, New York; commissioned by Yorkshire Sculpture International, 2019 32 Untitled, 2018 Ink, acrylic paint, oil stick on colour photograph Courtesy the artist and Salon 94, New York 33 Untitled, 2016 Ink, collage and oil stick on colour photograph Christian Levett Collection 34 Untitled, 2015 Ink, pastel acrylic paint and collage on paper Collection of Huma Bhabha 35 Untitled, 2016 Ink, pastel and collage on paper Courtesy the artist and Salon 94, New York 36 Untitled, 2016 Ink, pastel and collage on paper Courtesy the artist and Salon 94, New York 37 Untitled, 2016 Ink, pastel and collage on paper Courtesy the artist and Salon 94, New York 38 Untitled, 2013 Ink, pastel and collage on paper Courtesy the artist and Salon 94, New York
Cargo Tomb, 2005 (#8) After moving to Poughkeepsie, Bhabha took a job at a taxidermist’s studio where she was introduced to animal bones and skulls, some of which have found their way into her work such as the springbok horn in Cargo Tomb. The artist began experimenting with the use of clay in 2001, on a trip to Mexico. Here the clay resembles skin, stretched over a wood and Styrofoam armature with a spill of enamel, the crumbling material revealing the structure inside. The small, horizontal figure with its clasped hands, lying on the plinth, calls to mind a sarcophagus or a tomb. Reconstructions, 2007 (#20) Bhabha made her series of photogravure prints by drawing and over-painting on photographs she had taken on the outskirts of Karachi, showing desert landscapes and construction sites. The artist made black and white enlargements of the photographs and began drawing on them with India ink. The landscapes have been transformed as the foundations or plinths for giant sculptures. The prints combine with two woodblock prints of feet to form an installation of imagined monuments. Untitled (bronze feet), 2007 (#7) Feet are a recurring motif in Bhabha’s work, frequently appearing in her photographs, drawings, prints and sculptures. Inspired by ancient monuments and the broken statues of antiquity, they also refer to a gory image from a film which the artist remembers seeing, where a man’s body is blown up with only his high-top sneakers and ankles left behind. Originally made with wire and clay, this sculpture of a pair of feet has been cast into bronze, a material that Bhabha mainly uses for her outdoor commissions. Ripley, 2011 (#9) In her sculptures, Bhabha combines clay with unlikely combinations of found materials: wood, plastic, fabric, chicken wire, rubber tyres, and Styrofoam packaging retrieved from rubbish bins or gifted to the artist. Ripley, titled after the main character from the Alien films, is made from a found wooden plinth and two Styrofoam fish containers stacked one on top of the other. Untitled, 2013–16 (#34–38) In her works on paper, Bhabha uses images and clippings from wildlife calendars and brochures, featuring wolves, bears, elephants, and dogs. She began working on these around 2013, incorporating images from a Jack Russell calendar she had in her studio. Outlines of skulls and heads are drawn and painted over the found collaged elements, creating layers of information. The artist uses these works to explore the lost connection between human and animals. Castle of the Daughter, 2016 (#17) Bhabha discovered cork in 2008, when a stationery store was closing down near to her studio in Poughkeepsie, upstate New York. She bought some blocks that had been used for displays, made them into columns and began carving the dense, earthy material into heads and torsos. When the artist ran out of cork, she used some Styrofoam in her studio to finish a sculpture, blending the two together. This led to the development of cork and Styrofoam hybrids, such as Castle of the Daughter, the title of which relates to a ruined castle in Afghanistan.
Glossary Arte Povera Arte Povera (‘Poor Art’) was a radical art movement prevalent in the 1960s and 1970s in Italy, whose artists explored a range of unconventional processes using non-traditional, cheap everyday materials such as soil, leaves, wood, and rags. Classicism Refers either to the art produced in antiquity (before the sixth century) or to later art inspired by that of antiquity and the ancient civilisations of Greece and Rome. Cubism An artistic movement that was prominent in France in the early twentieth century. The Cubist style emphasised the flat, two-dimensional surface of the picture plane, proposing new modes of representation such as multiple views of subjects. Leading figures include the artists Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. German Expressionism An early twentieth century German art movement that valued the externalisation of human emotion, feelings or ideas over pure representation and replicating reality. Characterised in painting by the use of bold colours and gestural marks or brushstrokes. Photogravure A printmaking technique used for reproducing a photograph. A metal plate is coated then etched to different depths according to the tones of the original image. The plate is then inked and pressed onto paper.
Reading List Huma Bhabha has compiled the following list for further reading: Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges (1962–1983) Martian Time-Slip by Philip K. Dick (1964) The Penultimate Truth by Philip K. Dick (1964) The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East by Robert Fisk (2005) Listening to Grasshoppers: Field Notes on Democracy by Arundhati Roy (2010) Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield by Jeremy Scahill (2013) Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley (1818) Julian by Gore Vidal (1964) Front page: Antonio Tabucchi, ‘Against Time’, 2009, trans. Martha Cooley and Antonio Romano, in Jhumpa Lahiri (ed.), The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories, Penguin Random House UK, London, 2020, p. 54
Exhibition supported by the Henry Moore Foundation. With additional support from Salon 94, New York
Registered Charity: 1076251