Rina Banerjee’s entangled perceptions challenge the politics of beauty and prejudices that run deep, finds Neha Bhatt.
Esoteric might be too simple a way to describe Brooklyn-based artist Rina Banerjee’s work, but eclectic it certainly is.
“Specific colonial moments” that reinvent place and identity find form in acrylic and ink on paper, in a solo exhibition, ‘Allure’, by the artist at Gallery Espace, New Delhi, on till January 13.
This collection is colourful, the works sprinkled generously with motifs of Indian spices, gold and jewels as also glittering saris, depictions that look suitably exotic and unusual but go far beyond. For this Yale-educated artist, the essence of her work lies in the long history to the mythologisation of the female figure, body and its vanishing sexuality towards an ungendered old age. In her entangled perception of beauty, she finds that it indeed is a space that resounds with power. It creates a sense that it is a god-given power which is visible to all in complete agreement. “But really, what is beautiful is a contested space negotiated by culture, colonialism, gender domination and imperialism. We learn what is beautiful and also what must be rejected as ugly. This process is an assimilation process. Beauty is a socio-politcal project and art challenges the parameters of beauty and its politics,” she says firmly.
In assembling colonial objects, souvenirs and decorative crafts, their aesthetic and cultural beginnings suggest, in particular, how the many regional cultures continue to stain our perceptions of home, of the exotic, the foreign and domestic worlds. Her varied works in the form of sculptures, installations, videos and drawings are inspired by a wide range of objects and crafts.
Particularly interesting is her work in the piece titled “Wild Flower”, which Banerjee explains is made on top of a digital image of an engineering drawing of duct /electrical system for New York Cities’ Colombia Center for disease Control. “The original drawing I found and took an interest in because of the implication of disease control and environment containment strategies that institutions played from the turn of the century. The containment and disposal of sick air from this hospital and the absorption and circulation of fresh air was the objective of making such intricate drawings. I am interested in how people, objects, commerce and disease move, how travel creates anxieties about safety, hygiene, and creates an us and them mentality,” Banerjee points out. The tree, with American money as leaves in “Wild Flower” represents commerce as a unnatural growth of imperialism.
There is also a recurring preoccupation with the savage. Insects and alien figures in this collection seemlessly merge beauty with the grotesque. As an artist born in Calcutta, but brought up in the West, geographical spaces for Banerjee often come together in a single frame, yet remain culturally and realistically very much in contrast. “The East and the West have been and continue to be unequal. The West has been in a monologue, creating art in its own image, as a isolated project. The East has been working furiously to speak to it by learning its language, surviving its violence,” she says.
While Banerjee is of the opinion that a conversation cannot take place unless true interest emerges out of the West to learn the other language, a new language must emerge that makes conversation possible. “This could be a global space. Female sexuality will emerge out of this conversation as a visible and contested site of conflict. I hope women will have a voice to shape it and reshape male sexuality,” she says. That’s an artistic ideal.
