Podophiliacs beware, Huma Bhabha preys on your greatest fear

If you’re one who gets his/her jollies from feet, then you’re in luck. Huma Bhabha’s work, though largely using 3-dimensional materials, has a few photographs cum drawings of feet thrown in, too. For your viewing pleasure…though pleasure may not be so much what one feels when looking at these enormous, gritty feet.

These feet, out of context, look like they belong to a small giant or an NBA player, whichever comes first. In fact, this was Bhabha’s intention: she liked getting pictures of feet out of context to make them look bigger. She took these photographs in Karachi, where she was wandering around delayed construction sites. The picture definitely resembles a Quentin Tarantino movie still, with desolation meeting a sense of foreboding as you look at the monochromatic soil touching the saturated red background. One can practically hear the Ironside Siren Sound looking at this.

Bhabha sticks a lot of feet in her work, literally, which makes you think that the girl may have a foot fetish herself. When asked about this frequent feature in her art, Bhabha said:

“Three images come immediately to mind: the advancing feet of kouroi, a simple step that signified movement and a major advance for figurative sculpture; the painting of van Gogh's shoes, which I've loved and tried to emulate since I was young; and a memory of a movie from years ago, in which one of the characters was blown up, leaving only a pair of sneakers with little bits of bloody bones sticking out.”

Yikes. Clearly, conventional pretty feet have no value for Bhabha!