Huma Bhabha: Assembled from mundane materials and scraps of detritus, Huma Bhabha’s My Skull Is Too Small resembles an array of masks or totems. Abstracted fragments of human features—eyes, ears, and legs—coalesce uneasily, as if they are still in the process of being formed or already in a state of decay. The sculpture’s stylized composition and areas of roughly worked clay evoke archaic monuments ravaged by time. Yet the tangled chicken wire and spraypainted Styrofoam blocks that protrude beneath the clay surfaces locate the piece in the present or even in some imaginary dystopian future. The pedestal of this work, with its graffiti marks and collage elements, suggests a shipping crate. Bhabha often describes her sculptures as “characters” that project psychological depth through traces of violent use and references to the history of figurative sculpture. Although the distressed materials in her work can allude to catastrophe, they also convey a paradoxical sense of renewal. (From the 2010 Whitney Biennial website)
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