New Delhi
National Gallery of Modern Art
“Transfigurations: The Sculpture of Mrinalini Mukherjee,” curated by Peter Nagy, was a triumph of the artist’s vision. It also served as a memorial retrospective; Mukherjee died, at the age of 65, just a week after the opening. Influenced by her early training under the great Indian Modernist painter K.G. Subramanyan in Baroda, Mukherjee hit her stride when she began using dyed hemp and rope to create pulsating sculptures that combine an interest in mythology with strange, primordial shapes. In Yogini and Basanti, for example, tall, formidable, headless figures imbued with the voluptuousness and sensuality of ancient Indian temple sculptures are contrived to resemble nothing and everything at the same time. Tactile and anthropomorphic, Mukherjee’s atavistic forms come alive through folds, curves …see the entire review in the print version of May’s Sculpture magazine.
