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MEERA
MUKHERJEE (12th May, 1923 - 27th January, 1998):
CELEBRATING HER CENTENARY
The
immense intricacy (often referred to as 'technicality'
by the artist herself) and labour of her process
of sculpting became the defining identity of Meera
Mukherjee. Her work became for her a way of life,
an alternative chosen mode of existence, as she
carried the lost-wax technique of metal-casting
that she had learnt from traditional metal craftsmen
of India into new orders of scale, innovation and
creativity, and as she simultaneously moved her
individual practice into a place of collective community
work. This image of her working in the small verandah
of her rented home on Paddapukur Road in Bhawanipur
in south Kolkata was taken in 1978 by the professional
photographer, Arun Ganguly. As her neighbour in
Bhawanipur and a committed observer of her work
processes and their end-products, Arun Ganguly photographed
Meera Mukherjee over several seasons of her sculpting,
in her Kolkata home and at her work place at Elachi
(a rural suburb of the city). He began photographing
her in 1978, resuming in the 1990s, and poignantly
carrying over into the months after her death in
1998, when he ended his series by documenting the
completion of her last unfinished work, her monumental
seated Buddha, by the community she had trained
and nurtured.
Galerie
88 is honoured to mark Meera Mukherjee's 99th birthday
today and the beginning of her centenary year, by
announcing a forthcoming exhibition of a selection
of these extraordinary photographs from the large
Arun Ganguly collection. Jointly curated by Tapati
GuhaThakurta and Adip Datta, the exhibition is scheduled
to open at the gallery on Friday, 11th June, 2022.
On the anvil are other programmes for this centenary
year - lectures, conversations, films screenings,
leading to the publication of a long-planned book
on Meera Mukherjee, that will be compiled and edited
by Tapati Guha-Thakurta.
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