A.B. 2006

painted bronze

112 x 47 x 24 cm

Waiting for a Friend     2003

                     Mixed Media                     

231.1 x 71.1 x 45.7cm 

Approaching sculpture as a form of abjection, Huma Bhabha uses found materials combined with moulded components to create an aesthetic that’s equally industrial and barbaric. Using the rough hewn tactility of her materials, Bhabha’s work exudes a fragile sensibility; their underlying fictions of lost utopia wittily mirror contemporary anxiety. Bhabha’s Waiting For A Friend towers as a dejected fertility totem. Lingering lonely against the gallery wall, its archaic form swells with expectation: plaster and wax thighs bulging, head exaggeratedly erect, spilled guts on full display. 

International Monument 2003

clay, Styrofoam,chicken wire and bone

61 x 81.2 x 43.1cm

Picturing an upraised hand crudely crafted from impoverished materials and rendered in humble scale, Huma Bhabha’s International Monument is less an icon of peace than a remnant of a forgotten ideal. Boldly exhibiting the methods of sculptural process as finished work, Bhabha’s International Monument is conspicuously incomplete in pre-casting form; the potential for bronzed immortality is discarded in preference for the meagre and degradable. Lumpy crackling clay clinging to flimsy mesh and crumbly Styrofoam creates an intriguing tactility, echoing the fragile nature of the body. Rethinking the authoritarian qualities of ‘monument’ as reflective of the human condition, Bhabha’s sculpture is both destitute and empathetic.

Museum Without Walls 2005

Clay, wire, wood, Styrofoam

86 x 64 x 89 cm

Humorously referencing both tribal masks and modernism, Huma Bhabha’s Museum Without Walls presents the anatomy of a sculpture as voodoo construction. Using the traditional materials of sculptural moulding Bhabha constructs a skeleton of process, her formalist assemblage doubling as anthropomorphic entity. Laying bare her media and their function, Bhabha infuses her work with suggestive narratives. Museum Without Walls stands as both totem and architectural model, creating a contemporary primitivism from cultural refuse.

Sell the House 2006

Mixed Media   

139.7 x 96.5 x 71.1cm

2006
Clay, wire, plastic, paint
114.3 x 243.8 x 152.4 cm

Working with found materials and constructed forms, Huma Bhabha reworks the familiarity of everyday objects into creepy inventions. Something between a primitive species and space alien, her Untitled is both ghastly and sympathetic. Set atop an altar-like plinth, Bhabha’s figure prostrates in submissive position. Shrouded in black, hands outstretched as if in prayer, it echoes humility and reverence; its aura of calm perversely interrupted by a rigid tail trailing out from behind.