DHC/ART Foundation for Contemporary Art opens exhibition of works by Bharti Kher
(Artdaily.org)

Bharti Kher is known internationally for her signature use of the bindi in works across painting and sculpture. Derived from the Sanskrit word bindu—meaning point, drop, dot or small particle—and rooted in ritual and philosophical traditions, the bindi is a dot applied to the centre of the forehead as a representation of a spiritual third eye. Originally applied with natural pigment, bindis have transformed over time to become a popular, mass produced accessory. Kher reclaims this way of seeing by creating intensely layered and lavish ‘paintings’ that are charged with the bindi’s conceptual and visual links to ideas such as repetition, the sacred and the ritual, appropriation, and a deliberate sign of the feminine. The bindi becomes a language or code we begin to read through works that elicit formal connections with abstract