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Rina Banerjee
Resisting Rest, 1999
Foam, incense sticks,
dry pigment, coiled chiffon, wrought iron bed
What is the "nature of illness"?
In a time where the electronic age has dissolved boundaries created
by nations, the private transgresses the public in an altered state
of aggression. An examination of mobility manifested reaches the most
intimate of places to expose the never still self. Migration in complete
contradiction to the act is displacement, exile and associated with
punishment and discipline, at least on a mythological level. Migration
associated with disease has evolved parallel dialogues that attempt
to disseminate control over the foreign body. A compulsive act of separation
is entertained both in order to concretely preserve and illuminate the
past. Identity politics in the discussion of displacement struggles
to normalize hybridity into a "healthier" more familiar place
of rest.
Colonial medicine confronted with the vast array of different people and place upon conquest and occupation furthered its capitalistic venture. We have inherited from Colonial medicine. The notion of "other" as a resistant and unhealthy unit, which need ready assimilation legitimizing the most aggressive methods, was a phenomena that predates contemporary global imperialism. These pieces enact the three spaces of interrogation. Marriage, Sexuality and the Intellect.
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Rina Banerjee received her Fine Art training at Yale University where she acquired an MFA degree. Ms. Banerjee was a recipient of the Norfolk-Yale Drawing award and Skowhegan School of Painting scholarship. Ms. Banerjee has been an active educator in the areas of Cultural Studies and Women's Studies in the Visual Arts while teaching at Bucknell University, Penn State University and the University of Chicago. In addition, her work has been exhibited at the Bronx Museum of Art and the Queens Museum Art in New York City. In this year Ms. Banerjee will exhibited her work in the Whitney Biennial 2000, Brent Sikkema, Debs&Co. Presently she lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. |
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