New York, New York
Artworks shown are selected from works submitted by the artist in their grant or residency application. All works are copyright of the artist or artist’s estate.
Rina Banerjee lives and works in New York City. She was born in Kolkata, India, and lived briefly in Manchester and London before arriving to Queens, New York. Drawing on her multinational background and personal history as an immigrant, Banerjee’s work focuses on ethnicity, race, and migration and American Diasporic histories. The artist’s sculptures feature a wide range of globally sourced materials, textiles, colonial/historical and Domestic objects, while her drawings are inspired by Indian miniature and Chinese silk paintings and Aztec drawings. In 2018, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the San José Museum of Art co-organized the artist’s first solo retrospective, Rina Banerjee: Make Me a Summary of the World. The retrospective’s North American tour includes exhibitions at the Fowler Museum at University of California and Frist Art Museum, with a final showing at Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University in 2021. Banerjee has exhibited internationally, spanning 14 biennials including 57 Venice Biennial, Yokohama Triennale, and Kochi Biennial. The artist’s works are included in many private and public collections such as the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Whitney Museum of American Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Centre Pompidou, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, San Jose Museum of Art, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, and the Brooklyn Museum.
Painters & Sculptors Grant, 2020
My work for more than two decades has been making artwork that recognizes an inclusive history, evolving out of migration, global exchanges, and commerce. The existing racial inequities and gender imbalances create for the world a poverty that weighs heavily in my thoughts, and my specific personal history remains my guardian to direct the work and its journey.”
