Huma Bhabha was born in 1962 in Pakistan. She lives and works in Poughkeepsie, New York.
Huma Bhabhaʼs sculptures evoke primitive art, rituals from other cultures, or figures from post-apocalyptic tremors. They are made of poor or recycled materials such as polystyrene, iron, dried clay or recycled pieces of wood. Her sculptures retain a very mysterious aspect that one does not know if they are situated in the primitive era or on the contrary on the outskirts of a new world after a planetary destruction.
These sculptures, at once shapeless and very material, exude a great spirituality.
In the hands of dʼHuma Bhabha, original forms such as a face, body or royal throne are twisted, transformed into very atypical materials to give hybrid forms.
The forms are modeled in a spirit of revisitation as already Picasso, Giacometti or Lipschitz did it before Huma Bhabha. But there is also a very American approach claiming the refusal of the hierarchy of the forms, materials and modes of representation as in Rauschenberg then as in the minimal art with also the post-capitalist spirit of the Seventies, the violence which one could see in the videos of Bruce Nauman, the sculptures of Chris Burden then in the paintings of Basquiat.
But the originality of Bhabha's work lies in an almost religious sense given to her works, close to the Shamanism of Beuys, who also worked with very simple and meaningful materials.
She also refers to Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem, Ozymandias, of which one interpretation of the sonnet is that time always wins, nature always prevails in the end.
"Bump in the Road", 2008, will be on view at the gallery. This work was previously shown at the Aldrich Museum in 2008. Made of clay, wood, packing cloth, iron, sand and ash, this work traces the whole universe of Huma Bhabha.
Two medium-sized sculptures made of cork and paper will also be exhibited, they exude the same mystery as the large sculptures of Easter Island.
Also on display will be overpainted photographs in which we can feel the roots of Huma Bhabha, Pakistan, whose ruins and desert she photographs. It is still an apocalyptic landscape on which she draws large feet of colossus. Is it to show the rootedness and fossilization of cultures or is it the escape from the desolate landscapes? The artist travels twice a year to Pakistan, whose deep roots she claims.
As in the watercolors, Huma Bhabha, gives great depth to the looks and faces that are half human, half simian. The colors are very intense and deep. We find the "primitive" atmosphere of the sculptures.