Sketchbooks and Diaries

"They seem to hold my brain together," says Bharti Kher of her Sketchbooks and Diaries. A collection of drawings and words, where writing matches the images, and the two elements seem to cooperate and work together, in an alternation that follows the order of thoughts. The volume collects a series of drawings made by the artist between 2013 and 2015, a period of strong experimentation that matches with the residency period at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

The inspiration for these works comes from the female figure, which becomes the center of Kher's investigation: from the plaster of paris casts of old women to the pencil drawings inspired by some Madonnas carved in the 15th century; from pregnant women drawn with feltpens to pop colours wombs. The woman remains the focus of this research path, and art becomes a way to escape, to set free: Sketchbooks and Duaries suggests intimate and personal thoughts, which are given to us with delicacy and prorunence.