Bharti Kher: This Breathing House

Published for the 2016 exhibition of the same name held at the Freud Museum, 'This Breathing House' offers an intimate view of Indian artist Bharti Kher’s (born 1969) multipart installation in Sigmund Freud’s final home in London. The exhibition equally explores Freud’s family life as well as his theories, creating a dialogue with the house. Referring to Maresfield Gardens as an organism, a ‘breathing entity’, Kher overlays, subverts, conserves and erases memories – of herself and of her own life, of her family and of the people who lived here. She adds traces to the house to suggest conversations past and present that engage with Freud’s references to the mind as a complex energy system. Kher extends the conversation to include the body. Following a foreword from the museum’s director, the essay by Stephanie Rosenthal, Chief Curator of the Hayward Gallery, explores Kher’s work, its themes and dialogue with its setting. The essay unfolds the history-laden artworks, among them a tower of red glass bangles that evoke the sound of women moving through a space, life-size casts of Kher‘s parents and collages from the educational children’s book series Dick and Jane. Also included are quotes from the artist herself, as well as Sigmund and Anna Freud, Gaston Bachelard, Georges Didi-Huberman and Maggie Nelson, among others. Replete with installation views and detail shots, the publication reads like a thoughtful walkthrough of the exhibition itself.