A new exhibition at London's Royal Academy showcases the extraordinary sculptural work of Mrinalini Mukherjee, the late Indian artist whose fiber-based creations transform natural forms into surreal, powerful artworks. However, the show's ambitious attempt to place her work within a broader context of South Asian art ultimately diminishes the impact of her remarkable pieces.
Upon entering the gallery, visitors are immediately confronted by Mukherjee's commanding presence through works like "Pakshi," meaning "bird" in Hindi. Created in 1985, this red and brown creature appears both demonic and vulnerable, with a sagging stomach and imposing stature that seems to tower and slump simultaneously. The sculpture, suspended from the ceiling by cords and made from tightly woven natural fibers, exemplifies Mukherjee's ability to create hallucinatory yet sharply observed responses to nature. If the supporting cord were to snap, the piece would simply collapse into a pile of hemp on the floor, adding to its precarious, living quality.
Born in Mumbai in 1949 and dying in 2015, Mukherjee developed her distinctive artistic voice through intensely colored natural fiber works that echo the Indian landscape and skies. Her sculptures demonstrate a fantastic imagination where birds transform into ogres, flowers grow into sprawling, bloodied excrescences, and trees transmute into golden forms. This transformative vision reflects deep roots in Indian artistic traditions, from natural observation and hooded cobras to elephant-headed gods, dancing bodies, and the abstract representation of Shiva as a cylindrical lingam.
The exhibition, titled "A Story of South Asian Art: Mrinalini Mukherjee and her Circle," attempts to trace a century of South Asian art by surrounding Mukherjee's work with pieces by mentors, friends, and family members. The show begins promisingly by exploring her artistic heritage through her parents, both artists themselves. Her father, Benode Behari Mukherjee, struggled with visual impairment and eventually became blind, perhaps explaining why his Matisse-like collages are so electrically bright and celebrate color as if it were life itself. Her mother Leela's carved wooden figures display a chunky totemic energy that seems to have influenced Mrinalini's sculptural gifts.
However, this contextual approach quickly becomes problematic as Mukherjee's sophisticated works from the 1980s onward are forced to compete for attention with mediocre watercolors and paintings by her contemporaries. Pieces like "Adi Pushp II" (meaning "First Flower") demonstrate her conscious engagement with Indian religious and artistic traditions. This grossly shaped, plant-like sculpture blossoms with erotic suggestiveness and recalls the lingam form, probably because both draw inspiration from flower stamens. The work is smartly rooted in India's religions and art, casting all other artists in the exhibition into deep shade.
Mukherjee's art transcends local boundaries to achieve international significance, particularly her works from the 1980s that suggest connections to magic realism. She mingles modern India's history with surrealism, dreams, and fantastical images of an intense national landscape, producing an enchanted cocktail of birds and flowers, gods and monsters infused with desire and dread. "Night Bloom II," owned by the British Museum, exemplifies this approach with its lotus-position shape that simultaneously evokes a festering flower of the mind, crafted from sliding green ceramic with blood-red glazed sections.
The sculpture embodies profound contradictions, appearing both spiritually calm and sensually violent, possessing the tension that transforms impressive artwork into enduring art. While wall text suggests the figure looks female, it more accurately evokes statues of seated Buddhas and sages that transcend gender boundaries. This complexity demonstrates how Mukherjee drew deeply from her cultural heritage while creating works that remain meaningful and accessible to contemporary global audiences.
Despite the Royal Academy's commendable decision to showcase this great modern artist, the exhibition's execution proves disappointing. The constant presence of second-rate surrounding works - described as "so-so landscape paintings" and "tedious figurative screens" - creates a wet blanket effect over Mukherjee's exhilarating creations. Visitors find themselves wanting to see more of her sculptures and progressively less of the watercolors and other works that clog the gallery like slow traffic, forcing the artist into endless polite artistic conversation about everyone else's contributions.
The exhibition runs at the Royal Academy in London from October 31 through February 24, offering viewers the opportunity to encounter Mukherjee's extraordinary vision despite the curatorial shortcomings. Her work demonstrates that outstanding contemporary art speaks for itself across cultural boundaries, making the decision to muffle her achievements in mediocre surroundings particularly frustrating for visitors seeking to appreciate one of South Asia's most innovative sculptural voices.
