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Huma Bhabha

LIVIN' THINGS

10.06.23

29.10.23

M Leuven

Untitled, Huma Bhabha, 2021, private collection. Courtesy of the artist & Xavier Hufkens, Brussels, photo: Adam Reich

Huma Bhabha is known for her distinct visual language, which focuses on the human figure in all its expressive potential. She draws inspiration from ancient sculpture, modernism and contemporary popular imagery. Bhabha's monumental sculptures in striking material combinations hover between the recognisable, human or animal and the otherworldly. In powerful and sometimes unsettling works, she explores themes such as colonialism, war, displacement and memories of place.

Huma Bhabha in her studio in Poughkeepsie, New York, 2018. Photo: Lauren Lancaster

Huma Bhabha lives and works in Poughkeepsie, New York. She moved from Karachi to the United States in 1981 to pursue her studies at the Rhode Island School of Design, and then Columbia University. She garnered international acclaim in 2018 for ‘We Come in Peace’, two colossal bronze figures that she installed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s roof garden.

Bhabha has, amongst others, exhibited at the Sydney Biennale (2020), ICA Boston (2019), the Venice Biennale (2015), MoMA PS1 (2012), the Whitney Biennale (2010) and the Gwangju Biennale (2008). In 2020, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art organised her first major retrospective in Europe.

She received the Emerging Artist Award from The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Connecticut (2008), the Guna S. Mundheim Fellowship (2013) and was elected National Academician in 2022 by The National Academy of Design, New York.

Huma Bhabha's practice consists of sculpture, photography and drawings with ink, pastel and collage. Bhabha uses everyday materials such as Styrofoam, found wood, paint, clay and cork in her sculptures. She also makes works in bronze.

Bhabha draws on a wide range of references such as Ancient Greek, early African, Egyptian and Indian sculpture, modernism and expressionism. But her work is equally steeped in contemporary inspirations such as science fiction and horror films, current events and memories of her birthplace Karachi. Bhabha questions man's position in the world. She interweaves her works with allusions to environmental collapse, disasters of war, mass extinction and subsequent regeneration and transformation.

M shows a selection from her oeuvre, including her well-known androgynous totem figures and monumental drawings. The works are presented in a custom-made installation by M.

Sculptures

The sculptures born from the assemblage of various materials simultaneously repel and fascinate. At once monstrous, animal and deeply human, they find themselves between states of ruin and repair, recalling cycles of growth and decay.

Huma Bhabha, 'Impossible', Huma Bhabha, 2021 — ‘Impossible’, Huma Bhabha, 2021 (detail). Courtesy of the artist & Xavier Hufkens, Brussels, photo: Adam Reich

Exhibition view ‘Against Time’, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, 2020 — Installation view ‘Against Time’, 2020, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art © Huma Bhabha, BALTIC, photo: Rob Harris

‘The Ambitious One’ (detail), Huma Bhabha, 2021, private collection — ‘The Ambitious One’, Huma Bhabha, 2021 (detail), private collection. Courtesy of the artist & Xavier Hufkens, Brussels

Expressive drawings

In her expressive drawings, the artist incorporates images of wild life and domestic animals. This combination makes the initially menacing portraits charged with humour. The emphatic presence of eyes gives the depicted shapes anthropomorphic features. They form a mirror for the viewer, revealing their inner demons.