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.