Bharti Kher
22 August 2025 – 8 March 2026
Thorvaldsens Museum presents the internationally acclaimed artist Bharti Kher’s spectacular works in dialogue with Thorvaldsen’s serene surfaces and hidden narratives. At the heart of this exhibition are Kher’s sculptures, which draw visitors into a vast, interconnected world of endless folds. For Kher, the world is not static but in constant flux—like a fabric of layered time, space, and matter. Identities, concepts, and ideas are open to complexity and transformation.
Kher’s sculptures, materials and found objects converge in a multitude of shifting forms that capture, carry, and stretch time. Just as the body remembers and stores things we later seem to forget, so too does the sculpture. It carries time within it and recalls remnants of what has been seen or felt. Something we are not alone in. Something that insists on its existence. Her sculptures offer multiple doors to open or close and many rooms to enter. In their placement within Thorvaldsens Museum, they are met by Bertel Thorvaldsen’s quiet surfaces and hidden stories. In the sculpture, we see time passing and time passed. It breathes with the time and the human hand that helped shape it. The sculpture is a vessel of secrets and, in its form, a fluid moment frozen in time.
Bharti Kher was born in London in 1969 and studied painting at Newcastle Polytechnic. In 1993, she moved to New Delhi, India, where she has been primarily based ever since. Like the rest of her work, her sculptures are marked by a rich and layered visual language unconstrained by material, object, or physical law. Her works range from the intimate to the monumental and explore themes such as time, memory, transformation, the body, identity, and mythology. Kher’s sculptures are deeply engaged with the world and ways of understanding it, reflecting a practice in constant motion. Through visually striking and thought-provoking works, she delves into sociopolitical structures and challenges conventional perceptions of gender and culture. She raises questions about life and death, the cracks in our existence, our being in the world, and the things that connect us to one another.
Bharti Kher is represented by the galleries Hauser & Wirth, Nature Morte, and Perrotin. The exhibition is supported by the Aage and Johanne Louis-Hansen Foundation.
Thorvaldsens Museum presents the internationally acclaimed artist Bharti Kher’s spectacular works in dialogue with Thorvaldsen’s serene surfaces and hidden narratives. At the heart of this exhibition are Kher’s sculptures, which draw visitors into a vast, interconnected world of endless folds. For Kher, the world is not static but in constant flux—like a fabric of layered time, space, and matter. Identities, concepts, and ideas are open to complexity and transformation.
Kher’s sculptures, materials and found objects converge in a multitude of shifting forms that capture, carry, and stretch time. Just as the body remembers and stores things we later seem to forget, so too does the sculpture. It carries time within it and recalls remnants of what has been seen or felt. Something we are not alone in. Something that insists on its existence. Her sculptures offer multiple doors to open or close and many rooms to enter. In their placement within Thorvaldsens Museum, they are met by Bertel Thorvaldsen’s quiet surfaces and hidden stories. In the sculpture, we see time passing and time passed. It breathes with the time and the human hand that helped shape it. The sculpture is a vessel of secrets and, in its form, a fluid moment frozen in time.
Bharti Kher was born in London in 1969 and studied painting at Newcastle Polytechnic. In 1993, she moved to New Delhi, India, where she has been primarily based ever since. Like the rest of her work, her sculptures are marked by a rich and layered visual language unconstrained by material, object, or physical law. Her works range from the intimate to the monumental and explore themes such as time, memory, transformation, the body, identity, and mythology. Kher’s sculptures are deeply engaged with the world and ways of understanding it, reflecting a practice in constant motion. Through visually striking and thought-provoking works, she delves into sociopolitical structures and challenges conventional perceptions of gender and culture. She raises questions about life and death, the cracks in our existence, our being in the world, and the things that connect us to one another.
Bharti Kher is represented by the galleries Hauser & Wirth, Nature Morte, and Perrotin. The exhibition is supported by the Aage and Johanne Louis-Hansen Foundation.