Quick Facts
Biography
Huma Bhabha (born 1962, Karachi, Pakistan) is a Pakistani sculptor based in Poughkeepsie, New York. Known for her uniquely grotesque, figurative forms that often appear dissected or dismembered, Bhabha often uses found materials in her sculptures, including styrofoam, cork, rubber, paper, wire, and clay. Many of these sculptures are also cast in bronze. She is equally prolific in her works on paper, creating vivid pastel drawings, eerie photographic collages, and haunting print editions (published by the master printer Niels Borch Jensen in Copenhagen).
Career
Huma Bhabha received her BFA at the Rhode Island School of Design (1985) and her MFA from Columbia University (1989). She is represented by Salon 94, New York; Stephen Friedman Gallery, London; C L E A R I N G, New York & Brussels; and has worked with GRIMM Gallery, Amsterdam.
The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut, awarded its 2008 Emerging Artist Award to Bhabha. The award came with a $5,000 prize and a solo exhibition at the museum (September 14, 2008 – February 8, 2009). Her first solo museum exhibition in New York was in 2012 at MoMA PS1: Huma Bhabha: Unnatural Histories was organized by Peter Eleey, Curator, MoMA PS1, with Lizzie Gorfaine, Curatorial Assistant (November 18, 2012 – April 1, 2013).
Bhabha was featured as one of sixteen creative thinkers in the 2012 film From Nothing, Something: A documentary on the creative process, which has screened at multiple film festivals including the Newport Beach Film Festival.
In 2013 Bhabha was awarded a Berlin Prize Fellowship at the American Academy in Berlin. In 2016 she was honored by the Museum of Modern Art, New York during the museum's annual "Party in the Garden" celebration, and also served on the jury of the prestigious Nasher Prize, awarded by the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas (the prize was awarded in 2017 to artist Pierre Huygue).
Bhabha has exhibited internationally, and has been included in major group exhibitions including Greater New York at MoMA PS1 (2005 and 2015); USA Today: New American Art from the Saatchi Gallery at the Royal Academy of Arts, London (2006; traveled to the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia, 2007); the 2008 Gwangju Biennial; the 2012 Paris Triennial; the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2010 and 2011); the 2010 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and the 2015 Venice Biennale.
