The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum is pleased to announce the selection of Huma Bhabha as the recipient of the Museum’s 2008 Emerging Artist Award.

For this exhibition, Bhabha has created Bumps in the Road, a major figurative sculpture that measures 60 ½ x 66 ¼ x 80 ¼ inches and is made of clay, wood, wire, Styrofoam, metal studs, acrylic paint, cast iron, burlap, newsprint, sand, and ash. The sculpture will be installed in the center of the gallery, offering visitors a holistic three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of the piece. The exhibition will also include six works on paper.

Curator Merrill Falkenberg explains how Bhabha’s works are distinguished by their hybridity, “Using a disparate array of materials, she creates figurative objects that simultaneously reference Egyptian, Greek, and Indian sculpture, while recalling modern and contemporary works by Giacometti, Guston, and Kiefer. Obliquely political, her works bear witness to crises in the Middle East, yet her themes are far more universal. She transcends the particulars of religion to explore the suffering inherent in the human condition and the eternal hope for regeneration.”