The Past is a Foreign Country Installation Image

"Bludgeoned surface fetish, raw materials of new idols: golem, adobe clay, wire, foam, cork, bones, mud, dead roots, blown-out tires, alchemy of refuse (Shaman) … Christ was a bum … new religious art built from humble cast-off materials, collage (Kathy Acker) creates crime scene, Bernini corpse stirring in Vermeer light, mythological guardians sculpted in relief and in the round, models for monuments never to be built … become sleeping gods waiting to wake up to a New World!"

Huma Bhabha’s towering, fantastical figures come from deep imagination, taking the form of commanding apocalyptic hybrids. The works reference ancient Greek kouroi (sculptures of nude male youths), Gandharan buddhas (produced between the 1st century BCE and the 7th century CE in present-day Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan), African sculpture and Egyptian pharaohs. Bhabha’s figures emanate colonialism, war, displacement and memories of place. They may even represent border conflict or the guardians who transcend or witness such activity.