Huma Bhabha

Salon 94, New York

Huma Bhabha's work evokes the large-scale sculpture of the past, but instead of being cast in bronze or chiseled in marble it is constructed of the everyday detritus of contemporary life.  In Jhukarjodaro, the artist utilizes clay, wood, wire, Styrofoam, paper, photographs, leaves and feathers to create a monumental work which is evocative of the former Buddhas of Bamiyan or the Colossus of Rhodes.  But while it is impressive in its mass, it is also disturbing in its apparent fragility. Huma's use of everyday found objects and the manner in which she has assembled them, undermines any initial impressions of grandeur.  Indeed, the piece seems to be succumbing to millennia of elemental decay. Ingrained in the work are the contradictory notions of timelessness and mortality – our contemporary detritus redefined in classical imagery and destroyed by the artificial passing of time.