Rina Banerjee’s installation called “Take me, take me, take me…to the Palace of love” will be on display at the Yale Center for British Art until September.
Visitors entering the Yale Center for British Art this season are met with an unusual sight: a luminous pink model of the Taj Mahal.
Rina Banerjee’s ART ’95 immersive installation, “Take me, take me, take me…to the Palace of love,” on display at the YCBA until Sept. 13, transforms the image of the Taj Mahal into something translucent, buoyant and alive with movement.
“I actually really like it, it’s so unique,” visitor Claudia Lenskold said in an interview. “At first you just see the vibrant color and these random objects suspended in the air. Then you read that it’s about love.”
Banerjee’s Taj Mahal does not replicate the marble grandeur of its counterpart in Agra. Instead, it is constructed from unexpected materials: plastic wrap, toothpicks, found objects, antique furniture and suspended fragments. The bright pink and red colors of the sculpture are in stark contrast to white marble mausoleum on which it is based.
According to Banerjee, the origins of her engagement with the Taj Mahal date back to 1998. At the time, she had just been invited to participate in the Whitney Biennial — the longest running survey of contemporary art in the United States — but was unable to access her studio.
Working at home while caring for her young daughter — who would attend Yale in 2021 — Banerjee began experimenting at her table, wrapping food in Saran Wrap of various colors, she said. According to the artist, the material’s vivid hues and its extraordinary versatility fascinated her.
Before becoming an artist, Banerjee was a plastics engineer, and her understanding of material science informed these early artistic experiments, she said. Banerjee said she was drawn to plastic wrap’s resilience, its ability to withstand the warmth and pressure of hands and what she described as its memory property — the way it holds form after being shaped or stretched. Using toothpicks as armatures and a baby’s milk bottle and cap for a dome, she constructed a miniature pink Taj Mahal.
Decades later, the concept expanded dramatically. In 2023, Banerjee was invited to create a major commission at the Massachusetts Museum for Contemporary Art, where the pink Taj Mahal would become a large-scale installation, she said.
Here, the project became deeply research driven, and Banerjee said she travelled to various storage facilities and auction houses to collect materials.
Banerjee said she realized that objects that symbolized refinement and prestige in the United States were largely made in Asia. This historical research shaped the installation now on view at the Yale Center for British Art, she said.
Banerjee’s sculpture draws upon legend and cinema as well as history. She recalled a vintage black and white film in which a woman kneels before her lover, imploring him to take her to the Taj Mahal — the “palace of love.” That plea became the work’s title and emotional refrain. For Banerjee, the monument embodies modern romance: the desire to choose love as an individual, rather than submit solely to social arrangement.
The artist deliberately warped certain details of the iconic structure, she said. Banerjee described the monument as traveling — spiritually, intellectually and materially — across contexts.
Clara Ortenzi, a local high school senior visiting Yale, described feeling embraced by the piece. She interpreted the vibrant pinks and throne-like elements as symbols of love and creativity, which are especially resonant in February.
Claudia Lenskold, also a high school senior, noted her surprise at encountering such an installation at the museum. She also noted that the contrast between the marble original and Banerjee’s assemblage — constructed from what might be dismissed as “garbage” — heightened its impact.
The sculpture will be on view until Sept. 13, 2026.
