Huma Bhabha’s "Distant Star" at David Zwirner in Paris bridges sculpture and drawing, confronting viewers with potent forms and haunting imagery that meditate on humanity, decay, and historical echoes.
Presenting six enigmatic sculptures alongside a collection of vivid, large-scale multimedia drawings, Bhabha’s exhibition marks a significant evolution in both the materiality and conceptual breadth of her practice. This show arrives as her first solo Parisian outing in over fifteen years, amplifying anticipation that her latest offerings would introduce compelling new forms and textures.
The heart of "Distant Star" resides in the gallery's central space, where Bhabha’s sculptural forms emerge with a striking immediacy. These works, initially carved from cork, are further enlivened by the artist's experimental approach of applying wet clay onto carved surfaces, creating textural tension and unexpected chromatic nuances. This tactile layering invokes the sensation of discovering artifacts from an uncertain temporal context—entities suspended in perpetual transition between decay and creation.
Encircling these sculptures, Bhabha's ink-and-collage drawings hold their own, manifesting an unnerving presence through distorted visages and bold gazes. Her images reference historical iconography—especially the hooded portraits evocative of saints and Franciscan monks—as she deftly recontextualizes the symbol of the hoodie within a modern framework. These works possess a raw immediacy, combining photographic realism with hallucinations of ink that echo the spontaneous and visceral quality of her sculptures.
The dialogue between Bhabha’s two-dimensional and three-dimensional works is potent yet elusive, each medium seeming to absorb and reflect the other's complexities. Critics and curators alike have underscored her practice’s rich intertextuality—Bhabha gracefully draws from a vast spectrum of influences ranging from ancient Egyptian reliquaries and Gandharan Buddhas to contemporary figures like Joseph Beuys and Louise Bourgeois. Her references are as diverse as they are meticulously interwoven, embodying both historical resonance and contemporary urgency.
Notably poignant is the sculpture from which the exhibition takes its title: "Distant Star," a towering cast-iron figure poised in contemplative solitude in the gallery’s front room. Rusting organically over time, its evolving surface becomes a testament to the fluid boundaries between permanence and ephemerality that recur throughout Bhabha’s oeuvre. Standing as a sentinel caught in eternal watchfulness, it encapsulates the exhibition's central tension—the alluring interplay between monumentality and impermanence, attraction and repulsion.
Ultimately, "Distant Star" represents not just an evolution, but a bold, deeply personal articulation of Bhabha’s enduring themes: the grotesque, the humane, and the resiliently enigmatic nature of existence itself.
