Rina Banerjee
Encyclopedia
Rina Banerjee is an Indian born, New York based artist of international repute.
Her experience growing up in urban sites and in communities of mixed cultural/racial locations provides a content in her work that delivers a global all seeking vision. This love of substance, fabric and texture manifests itself in her multi media works in which disparate objects such as taxidermy alligators and wooden cots, fish bone, ostrich eggs and light bulbs, amber vials are strung up or nestled in with feathers and umbrellas, souveniers of low culture and high culture, antique furnishings, icons of different faiths and plumes of fabric.
Banerjee's preoccupation with the role of culture, mythology, fairy tales, anthropology, ethnography fold the trajectories of race, exotic capital, and the forces of our migration, mobility with tourism and global commerce. Tensions and desires created out of our individual increased travel and access to information technologies have preforiated our boundaries creating a malleabity that manages a globalized sense of space and a diminished experience of dominant culture paradigm.
Biography
Banerjee was born in Kolkata in 1963 and moved with her family to the UK and then to USA. She completed a Bachelor of Science degree in Polymer Engineering at Case Western University in 1993 after took a job as a polymer research chemist consulting for Dow Chemical, Nasa, etc at Pennsylvania State University. After a few years abandoned the sciences to pursue her art, she completed the MFA degree program at Yale University School of Art in the area of Painting in 1995, where she won prestigious awards for Drawing and Painting, Sckowhegan - Yale Painting scholarship and Norfolk-Yale summer program Drawing award.About her work
Rina Banerjee has a love of materials, heritage textiles, fashion, colonial objects and furnishings, historical architecture, and their ability to disguise, animate, locate their inherent meanings in her art work. While sculptures and drawings, paintings and videos which are a fusion of cultures and an explosion of imagination. She says her work explores "specific colonial moments that reinvent place and identity as complex diasporic experiences."Her experience growing up in urban sites and in communities of mixed cultural/racial locations provides a content in her work that delivers a global all seeking vision. This love of substance, fabric and texture manifests itself in her multi media works in which disparate objects such as taxidermy alligators and wooden cots, fish bone, ostrich eggs and light bulbs, amber vials are strung up or nestled in with feathers and umbrellas, souveniers of low culture and high culture, antique furnishings, icons of different faiths and plumes of fabric.
Banerjee's preoccupation with the role of culture, mythology, fairy tales, anthropology, ethnography fold the trajectories of race, exotic capital, and the forces of our migration, mobility with tourism and global commerce. Tensions and desires created out of our individual increased travel and access to information technologies have preforiated our boundaries creating a malleabity that manages a globalized sense of space and a diminished experience of dominant culture paradigm.
Biennales
- Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA (2000)
- Tsumari-Echigo Exhibition 3rd triennial, Hatchi, Japan, Curated by Fram Kitwaga (2006)
- Yokohama Triennial- Our Magic Hour, Japan, Curated by Akiko Miki (August 6- November 6, 2011)
Solo exhibitions
- Auf Weidersehen, Admit One Gallery, New York (2000)
- Antenna, Bose Pacia Modern, New York (2001)
- Phantasmal Pharmacopeia, Debs and Co., New York (2001)
- Phantasmal Pharmacopeia, Curated by Susette Min, Painted Bride Art Center, Philadelphia (2002)
- Fantasies without travel will travel, AMT Gallery, Como, Italy (2006)
- "Where the Wild Things Are"... is no place at all and all places that cannot be lived in but visited, realized out of our careful, playful and tenacious tourism of others, realized as our mobility wanders too far, Galerie Volker Diehl, Berlin (2007)
- Foreign Fruit, Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris (2007)
- Allure, Gallery Espace, New Delhi (2008)
- Distant Nearness, (with Bharti Kher and Subodh Gupta,) Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Kansas (2008)
- Look into my eyes and you will see a world unexplainable, out of place, Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Brussels (2009)
- Rina Banerjee and Raquib Shaw, Thomas Gibson Ltd., London (2009)
- Forever Foreign, Haunch of Venison, London (2010)
- Imagining the other half of the world from here, Project room, Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris (May 22- July 13, 2011)
- Chimeras of the India & the West, Musée Guimet, Paris (May 24-September 26, 2011)
Group exhibitions
- Seeking Beautiful Indian Girls, Gallery 401, Toronto (1997)
- Fermented, Arason Gallery, Parsons School of Design, New York (1997)
- Research Revision Reconstruct, Old Dominion University, New York (1997)
- Hybrid Harem, Colgate University, Dana Arts Center, New York (1997)
- Out Of India, Queens Museum of Art, Queens, New York (1997)
- Artist in the Market Place (AIM), Curated by Lydia Yee and Marisol Nieves, Bronx Museum, New York (1997)
- Bodies of Resistance, R.A.W., Connecticut and Durham, South Africa, Curated by Barbara Hunt (1999)
- Good Business is the Best Art, Curated by Lydia Yee and Marisol Nieves, Bronx Museum, New York (2000)
- Exoticism was for sale, Project Room, Debs. & Co., New York (2000)
- Broken Mirror, LeRoy Neiman Gallery, New York (2003)
- 5X5 Contemporary Artist on Contemporary Art, Curated by Shamin Momin, Whitney Museum of American Art, Phillip Morris Space, New York (2003)
- Yankee Remix, Curated by Laura Heon, Massachusetts Museum of Modern Art, North Adams, Massachusetts (2003)
- Specificity, Curated by Donald Odita, Riva Gallery, New York (2004)
- Open House, Curated by Charlotta Kotic, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, New York (2004)
- Sunset Sunrise, Curated by Courtney Martin and Amanda Church, Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, New York (2005)
- Suspended Ornament, Suite 106, New York (2005)
- Fatal Love: South Asian American Art Now, Queens Museum of Art, Queens, New York (2005)
- Looking in the Eye of the Beholder, Rotunda Gallery, Brooklyn, New York, Curated by Janine Cirincione (2005)
- Agra, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts, Curated by Karina Corrigan (2005)
- Greater New York Show, PS1/Moma, Queens, New York, Curated by Klaus Biesenbach and staff (2005)
- Black Moon Island: Contemporary International Drawing, One in the Other Gallery, London (2006)
- John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, Wisconsin (2006)
- An Archaeology, The Zabludowicz Art Collection, London (2007)
- I fear I believe I desire, Curated by Gayatri Sinha, Gallery Espace, New Delhi (2007)
- Exploding the Lotus, Co-curated by Jaishri Abichandani and Jane Hart, Art and Culture Center for Hollywood (2008)
- Indian Focus, Espace Claude Berri, Paris, France (2008)
- Evolution, Curated by Marc Wellman, Max Lang Gallery, New York (2008)
- Everywhere is War (And Rumours of War), Curated by Shaheen Merali, Bodhi Art, Mumbai (2008)
- Les Fleurs du Mal (The flowers of Evil still Bloom), Cueto Project, New York (2008)
- Dyed Roots: the new emergence of culture, Curated by Camilla Singh, Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto (2008)
- Lo Real Maravilloso: Marvelous Reality, organized by Gallery Espace, New Delhi and held at Rabindra Bhawan Galleries, Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, India (2009)
- Mythologies, Curated by Ben Tufnell with James Putnam, Haunch of Venison, London (2009)
- Anomalies, Curated by Jaishri Abichandani, Rossi and Rossi ltd. London (2009)
- Pretty is as pretty does, Curated by Laura Heon, Site Santa Fe Contemporary Art Center, New Mexico (2009)
- Wonderland, Curated by Robert Roos, Kade Amersfoort, Netherlands (2009)
- Bring Me a Lion, Hunt Gallery, Webster University, St. Louis, USA (2010)
- Roundabout, City Gallery Wellington, New Zealand (2010)
- Wild Things, Kunstallen Brandts, Odense, Denmark, Curated by Lene Burkard (2010)
- Fantasmagoria, le monde mythique, Curated by Pascal Pique, Les Abattoirs, Toulouse, France (2010)
- Pangea: Art at the Forefront of Cultural Convergence, Frey Norris Modern & Contemporary, San Francisco (February 2011)
- Roots in the Air, Branches Below: Modern & Contemporary Art from India, San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, California (February 2011)
- Avant Première, Art Plural Gallery, Singapore (3 June to 3 September, 2011)
- EAST EX EAST, Brand New Gallery, Milan (9 June- 30 July 2011)
- What is Sculpture, CRG Gallery, New York (July 2011)
- Fabular Bodies: New Narratives in the Art of the Miniature, Coomaraswamy Hall, Prince of Wales Museum, Mumbai, India, Curated by Gayatri Sinha (August 2011)
- Facets of the Figure, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Rodman & Renshaw LLC, McCarton Foundation and Quintessentially Art (September 2011)
Art fairs
- ARCO Madrid, Spain, Curated by Omar Chahoud Lopez, Debs & Co. of New York (2003)
- Silver pearl girls and Gardens, Art 37 VOLTA Basel, Switzerland (Solo), Newman Popiashvili Gallery, New York (2006)
- Frieze Art Fair, London, Galerie Obadia, Paris/Brussels (2006)
- Berlin Art Forum, Berlin, Galerie Volker Diehl, Berlin (2006)
- Shanghai Contemporary Art Fair, China (Solo), Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris/Brussels (2007)
- Art Unlimited, Art Basel 39, Switzerland, Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris/Brussels (2008)
- Without face: cultivating the foreign, Armory Art Fair, New York (Solo), Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris/Brussels (2010)
- ARCO Madrid, Spain, Haunch of Venison, London (2010)
- Art Dubai, Dubai, UAE, Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris/Brussels (March 2011)
- Armory Art Fair, New York, Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris/Brussels (2011)
- India Art Summit 2011, New Delhi, Gallery Espace, New Delhi
Galleries
- Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris, France
- Haunch of Venison, London, UK
- Gallery Espace, New Delhi, India