Rina Banerjee Exhibition Overview

Overview

Rina Banerjee

In a whirlwind, upside down two birds one named memory and the other sleepy past waving arms tried to lift mountains with her flocks flirted with sky and tickled the night to stop time., 2024

acrylic, ink, collage and copper leaf on paper

30 x 22 in

76.2 x 55.9 cm

Freedom wonders inside the fantastic, joyous, in relentless dreams free from constraints with movements wandering rotating entangled sinuous perpetual and glowing in effortless being and while wielding free will as“metallic otherness” we reach ourselves, our true selves, as singular and connected, diverse forever searching

OPENING RECEPTION FOR THE ARTIST: SATURDAY 11 MAY, 3-5 PM

Born in Kolkata and based in New York, Rina Banerjee creates shamanistic sculptures and vibrantly sensuous paintings-exploring the complexities of identity, the aftermath of colonialism, the nuances of migration, and what it means to be human-through the lens of a transnational woman of color.

Banerjee's approach is characterized by its defiance of traditional hierarchies-be they cultural, material, or linguistic. Her multifaceted artistic practice includes crafting fetishistic assemblages from a mix of antiques and tourist-market trinkets; painting and collaging evocative images of women in states of ecstatic transformation; and composing poetic titles that draw viewers into the emotional atmosphere of her creations.

Her fourth solo exhibition at Hosfelt Gallery focuses on the fundamental human rights to freedom from oppression: to live in safety, to move freely, and to have hope. Banerjee contends that when governments fail to protect these rights, they become illegitimate. This exhibition is a plea for the rejection of injustice and the hope for more ethical world order.

Rina Banerjee (b. 1963, Kolkata, India) received a BS in Polymer Engineering and worked as a research chemist before completing her MFA at Yale in 1995. Her ambitious mid-career survey exhibition, Make Me a Summary of the World-was organized by the San Jose Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, traveled to the Fowler Museum at UCLA, Frist Art Museum, Nashville, TN and Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, NC.Other recent solo museum exhibitions include the Smithsonian Museum's Sackler Galleries (Washington, DC) and the Musée Guimet (Paris). Her work was included in the Venice Biennale (2013 and 2017), Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2018), Prospect 4 in New Orleans (2017), the Busan Biennial (2016), the Asian Art Biennial at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (2015), Greater New York Shows at PS1/MOMA (2005 and 2015), and the Whitney Biennial (2000). Her work is in numerous international public and prestigious private collections.

Works

• Rina Banerjee Spoken to like earthquake, like mistakes, felt like heavy pancakes, made me shake, melt like ice cream on hot days., 2024 acrylic, ink, collage and copper leaf on paper 24 x 18 in 61 x 45.7 cm
• Rina Banerjee Morning dove, morning love., 2024 acrylic, ink, collage and copper leaf on paper 18 x 24 in 45.7 x 61 cm
• Rina Banerjee, So you heard me the Brown-headed Nuthatch crow, climb high free me, my heart, my vote., 2024
• Rina Banerjee, An occult beneath created never never ever treasures, underground, where ambitions for justice lie buried, a freak of biology, endowed with feathers blistered not from light and whence societies of unusual negligence speak as unseen voices to deliver with winged hands freedom., 2024
• Rina Banerjee Lucy and Billy broke the rope punished by winter's curls and prickly girls spring arrived., 2024 acrylic, ink and copper leaf on paper 30 x 22 in 76.2 x 55.9 cm
• Rina Banerjee, The magical, fantastic and bizarre collaborated to form herself assertiveness a kind of consciousness, agency., 2024
• Rina Banerjee, In the oriental tale which has a tale, a fictionalized world sedated fear, put to sleep freedom but tail or no tail she liked it severed forever., 2024
• Rina Banerjee Affinity and intimacy, no excess of miracles could explain my elephant my self as one., 2024 acrylic, ink and collage on paper 22 x 15 in 55.9 x 38.1 cm
• Rina Banerjee, Timeless birds to be watched, tireless mornings to wait in hopes to be free as feathery flight white- she listens as the squeaky voices of whip-poor-wills voices tow., 2024
• Rina Banerjee Blue jays at the bird feeder, five legs of all beak and muster, a nervous hunter weary of others at the hole in flutter, in sun hit my shutter., 2024 acrylic and ink on paper 22 x 30 in 55.9 x 76.2 cm
• Rina Banerjee Mother gathered Three or no more dirty black stones, tossed them to sky that could break what had hardened her ground and without frown or flirt of flower father like grease or butter slipped aside to free her from forty and some more grown men who held h, 2017 acrylic on two wood panels with sequin fabric and collage 80 x 40 x 2 in 203.2 x 101.6 x 5.1 cm
• Rina Banerjee Wedding thieves, they stole her away on that blessed day, full that was a day full of frills and ruffles, borders draped, dragged, pinched to anchor, barefoot petticoat and chemise, shoulder pads and anklets, stole her from her family, waked her in mourni, 2018 gourd, horn, glass beads, wire, copper crochet, copper wire, Murano glass beads 33 1/2 x 31 1/8 x 19 1/4 in 85 x 79 x 49 cm