Rina Banerjee. Installation view of Take me, take me, take me...to the Palace of love. 2003. COURTESY OF ARTIST AND GALERIE NATHALIE OBADIA, PARIS/BRUSSELS. © RINA BANERJEE. IMAGE COURTESY OF PENNSYLVANIA ACADEMY OF THE FINE ARTS, PHILADELPHIA/BARBARA KATUS.
“Banerjee’s work embraces the messiness of contradictory meanings.” This is an uncommonly succinct and genuinely respectful description of the artist’s work, which is dazzling, breathtaking and confounding. Reality and fantasy, history and mythology partner with each other. Her work is like a cartographic fiction, in which Banerjee schematizes and visualizes an imaginary world based on real world pliable fact. Banerjee is a rarity among artists, who can simultaneously enable and enrich meaning without being intentionally didactic or moralizing. Hers is a poetic activity that creates opportunities for viewers to awaken to alternative meanings in art.
