Rina Banerjee
Indian, 1963- (active USA)
Fermented Origins, 2020-2023
Rosewood and mixed media
81 1/2 x 30 x 37 in.
SBMA, purchased with funds provided by Kandy Luria, Luria/Budgor Family Foundation
2023.35
Rina Banerjee, photo: Erin Patrice O’Brien, 2024
“Art is what you inherit from other generations. It’s everything, it’s culture itself.”
– Rina Banerjee
RESEARCH PAPER
Fermented Origins is a mixed media sculpture that looks beyond boundaries to unite the complicated, divergent, and ever-changing global experiences especially those prevalent in diasporic communities. Made of metal, wood, cloth, and seashells: Fermented Origins draws the viewer’s curiosity and fascination.
The variety of materials in Rina Banerjee’s sculptures are sourced from throughout the world. They unite harmoniously in form, texture, and shape so sculptures, while balanced, can be simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar. She intentionally challenges establishments. Her work deconstructs colonialism encouraging connection and reconnection especially in diasporic communities (communities of people who live away from traditional homeland areas), which can be every community.
Born in India and raised in London and New York City, Banerjee is an American artist who exemplifies the importance of artistic diversity embracing all artists especially female artists and BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people or color) artists. Now based in New York City, Banerjee emerged as an artist in the late 1990s after earning a BS in Polymer Engineering from Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland and an MFA from Yale University, New Haven. She has taught at Yale, Bennington College, and the University of Chicago. Her exhibitions have been shown in New York, Los Angeles, London, Tokyo, Paris, and Singapore.
Rina Banerjee seeks out globally sourced materials at local stores. She attributes her love of patronizing diasporic stores: including stores with materials from India, West Africa, and Jamaica from her childhood shopping excursions with her mother. From shells and perfumes to feathers and plumes, Banerjee combines unique materials from around the world that manifest as engaging conversation pieces that juxtapose community with heritage and their role in self-identification.
The materials chosen for her pieces combine to form interesting and thought-provoking sculptures. A female figure perhaps reflective of mother earth, a sullen faced doll perched atop artificial vines connected by joyful Christmas colors of red and green, or a steel structure threaded with delicate beads, textiles, and bulbs. Banerjee unapologetically creates sculptures and installations that are a borderless artistic expression connecting countries, cultures, and community.
Fermented Origins reflects eclectic worldliness. A small and delicately carved rosewood bust of a woman with hair drawn up and back into a bun sits atop the sculpture. Rosewood is strong, highly prized and considered an endangered species. Highly appreciated for its coloring and beauty.
A black sequined sari falls downward from the rosewood bust onto an upper body of shells including cowrie shells. Cowrie shells were used as currency dating back to the 14th Century on the West Coast of Africa and used for trade throughout the world. The black sequined sari transitions to strands of long coiled bright yellow fabric cascading and enveloping the bodice like strands of hair.
The metal frame of Fermented Origins is wrapped in white diaphanous fabric angelically cinched at the waist with a narrow yet sturdy metal belt. The contiguity of traditionally masculine and feminine continues as twisted burly antlers entwined with metal protrude out of the delicate fabric to form arms above the waist. The pear-shaped skirt finishes the form with etched upturned brass slippers peeking from the base of the sculpture. Banerjee fuses these unique textures, colors, and shapes proportionally to illustrate the strength and delicacy of the female form and perhaps mother earth itself.
Rina Banerjee’s sculptures suggest that something is from somewhere else, someplace distant, hard to fathom, or long tainted. As a female South Asian American artist, Banerjee sees herself as trespassing on a historically “treasured male domain.” Her large bright sculptures are evocative, bright, excessive, and large. They deliberately take up space. In Fermented Origins, Banerjee reminds viewers to appreciate global alliances while summarizing the delicacy of our connections to each other and the world through borderless artistic expressionism.
Prepared for the Santa Barbara Museum of Art Docent Council by Johanna Chase, 2024.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Make Me a Summary of the World © 2018, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
The Routledge Companion to Decolonizing Art History, Rebecca M. Brown ©Routledge 2023
Rina Banerjee, https://rinabanerjee.com/page/4-About%20.html, 2024
Smithsonian, National Museum of African American History and Culture, Cowrie Shells and Trade Power, ©2024