Huma Bhabha (American, b. Karachi, Pakistan, 1962) is known for her engagement with the human figure and for her use of found materials, working primarily in sculpture. Often tending towards the grotesque, Bhabha’s sculptural works and photo-based drawings feature bodies that appear dissected and dismembered, but one can likewise view them as monuments to human life reclaimed from the detritus of a post-apocalyptic landscape. Incorporating materials like Styrofoam, animal bones and clay, Bhabha creates figures that feel unstable and ephemeral. Insistently contemporary, they nevertheless recall classical figurative traditions across a range of cultures and historical periods, typifying a strand of neo-primitivism that has arisen in the past decade.
Organized by Peter Eleey, Curator, MoMA PS1, with Lizzie Gorfaine, Curatorial Assistant.
