New Delhi, June 19 -- Some years ago, Bharti Kher wanted to see the heart of a sperm whale. She couldn't find a photograph online or in libraries-which came as a surprise since the contemporary artist, like most of us, thought there's nothing one can't find online anymore. Whales, she learned, sink to the bottom of the sea when they die, and the bodies are not preserved even if they die on shore. Her quest to see the massive creature's heart became the subject of her 2007 work An Absence of Assignable Cause, which depicts a two-chambered, red-andturquoise heart in fibreglass decorated with her signature bindis. "The idea was that we need the beating heart of this incredible creature to heal the world."

Kher often uses animal forms in her...