Threshold was commissioned for the public exhibition Mirror, Mirror (2025) at the Pitzhanger Gallery in Ealing, London. The historic interior of the Pitzhanger, the former home of neoclassical architect Sir John Soane, reflects Kaur’s fascination with site-specific installations. Fireplaces, alcoves, and ornate staircases become the backdrop for Kaur’s exploration of power and disobedience, enabling spaces and objects to slip free from their fixed identities.

In Threshold, daggers are interspersed with soft fluffy forms, an uneasy juxtaposition of fleece and copper. The installation takes the form of a ceremonial arch, reflecting the ambivalence that characterises Kaur’s work: the threshold is an entry-point that suggests both intimacy and exclusion. It also represents elements of Kaur’s Sikh heritage, with the pointed daggers recalling kirpans, cultural symbols of protection and defence. 

Permindar Kaur is one of Britain’s most innovative contemporary sculptural installation artists. Her work employs a distinctive visual vocabulary drawn from toys and the domestic sphere, combining playful expression with unsettling undertones. Through her use of materiality and scale, Kaur explores questions of identity, belonging, and the emotional charge of everyday objects.   

Raised in a Sikh family in Nottingham, Kaur studied at Sheffield Polytechnic and earned an MFA from Glasgow School of Art in 1992. Though she emerged alongside the Young British Artists (YBAs) in the 1990s and was later associated with the Black Arts Movement, Kaur has always seen herself operating at the margins of these artistic circles. This sense of the peripheral has continued to shape her practice and its defiance of easy categorisation.

Since her first solo exhibition in 1996, Kaur has exhibited widely across the UK and internationally, most recently with her show Strange Bedfellows at Lightbox in Woking. Her large-scale work Overgrown House (2020) can be seen at the sculpture park at Compton Verney until 2027.