Montpellier, France — Hers is an eclectic world drawing inspiration from diverse cultures, mixing myriad materials while showcasing the anthropomorphic and all that is hybrid. Huma Bhabha was born in Karachi, Pakistan in 1962 and after undertaking studies at two prestigious American schools, the Rhode Island School of Design and Columbia University, settled in the small and quaint upstate New York city of Poughkeepsie which sits on the Hudson River. Huma Bhabha is enjoying her first monographic exhibition in a French institution, the MO.CO or Montpelier Contemporary, an art institution based in the southern French city of Montpellier and described as an art eco-system as it brings together an art school and two contemporary art centers.

The exhibition, entitled A Fly Appeared, and Disappeared, brings together some 50 works in cork and polystyrene sculptures, bronzes, drawings on paper, photographs and photogravures and ceramics. This is a syncretic world often combining human and animal features like the monkey, the owl, the dog or the wolf. Her inspirations are diverse ranging from ancient sculptures to science fiction. The show opens up with her pivotal sculpture from the year 2000, Centaur, and then moves into a world of large-scale sculptures, assemblages and collages winding up with her latest terra-cotta works. 

The show astonishes and amazes while underscoring the complexity of our ever-changing world. Often totemic in appearance her works can evoke current events. She also uses salvaged objects in her works like furniture fragments and industrial polystyrene boxes. The pastels in her palette offer a unique contrast in her figurative works, particularly the ravishing rendering of a head in Untitled, 2021. Under the artistic direction of Numa Hambursin, MO.CO. C.E.O, the exhibition is curated by Vincent Honoré, Director of Exhibitions, along with Rahmouna Boutayeb and Pauline Faure, curators, assisted by Alexis Loisel–Montambaux. The Huma Bhabha exhibition is on until January 28th. https://www.moco.art/index.php/en

©Trish Valicenti for The Gourmet Gazette