Not all who wander are lost

Born and raised in England before moving to New Delhi, Bharti Kher is the sixth Artist-in-Residence at the Gardner Museum who was invited by Pieranna Cavalchini, The Tom and Lisa Blumenthal curator of Contemporary Art, to design a temporary site-specific work for the Anne H. Fitzpatrick Facade.

Called Not All Who Wander Are Lost, her installation reflects on maritime history, highlights her interest in mapping and typography, geodesy and colonization and references the migration of people in Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. 

Kher tells that “an Atlas lets you hold the world in your hands.” Not All Who Wander Are Lost is based, in part, on a ready-made, historic map from The Larousse International Political and Economical Atlas by Jean Chardonnet, which Kher has appropriated, enlarged, and transformed, filling the image with multi-colored bindi dots. Bindis are a forehead decoration worn by women in India. They represent the third eye, a state of consciousness, and are a central element in the artist’s work. The Hindi word Bindi is derived from the Sanskrit Bindu, meaning a drop or a small particle. In Not All Who Wander Are Lost, the acid orange colored bindis impart a sense of emergency as they collide with the black. These dots mark places for urgent attention and earnest conversation in our daily lives. They serve as a metaphor for the eye urging us to be aware of the shifting borders of migrant populations, marking the map as a constantly changing flux of truths and leaving a residue of time like a palimpsest.

until January 5, 2016
Bharti Kher
Not All Who Wander Are Lost
Isabella Stewart-Gardner Museum
280 Fenway, Boston