Ranu Mukherjee (born 1966) is a multi-disciplinary American

contemporary artist Contemporary art is a term used to describe the art of today, generally referring to art produced from the 1970s onwards. Contemporary artists work in a globally influenced, culturally diverse, and technologically advancing world. Their art i ...

of Indian and European descent based in

San Francisco, California San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

. Mukherjee's practice includes painting, installation, sculpture, video art, performance, hybrid films, works on paper, and collaborative projects. Her work focuses on processes of

creolization Creolization is the process through which creole languages and cultures emerge. Creolization was first used by linguists to explain how contact languages become creole languages, but now scholars in other social sciences use the term to describe ...

, the figure of the

nomad Nomads are communities without fixed habitation who regularly move to and from areas. Such groups include hunter-gatherers, pastoral nomads (owning livestock), tinkers and trader nomads. In the twentieth century, the population of nomadic pa ...

, and speculative narratives. Mukherjee’s work also generally refers to embodiment,

ecology Ecology () is the natural science of the relationships among living organisms and their Natural environment, environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community (ecology), community, ecosystem, and biosphere lev ...

science fiction Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, space ...

, and the unknown to explore the narrative excess and material conditions brought on by

global capitalism Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their use for the purpose of obtaining Profit (economics), profit. This socioeconomic system has developed historically through several stages a ...

Education and career

Ranu Mukherjee received her BFA in Painting and Film from the

Massachusetts College of Art Massachusetts College of Art and Design, branded as MassArt, is a public college of visual and applied art in Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1873, it is one of the nation's oldest art schools, and the only publicly funded independent art sch ...

, Boston, in 1988, and her MFA from the

Royal College of Art The Royal College of Art (RCA) is a public university, public research university in London, United Kingdom, with campuses in South Kensington, Battersea and White City, London, White City. It is the only entirely postgraduate art and design uni ...

, London, in 1993. After earning her degrees in art, she began teaching at

Goldsmiths College Goldsmiths, University of London, formerly Goldsmiths College, University of London, is a Member institutions of the University of London, constituent research university of the University of London. It was originally founded in 1891 as The G ...

in London in 1994. In 2002 She moved to San Francisco, California, where she teaches at

California College of the Arts The California College of the Arts (CCA) is a private art school in San Francisco, California. It was founded in Berkeley, California in 1907 and moved to a historic estate in Oakland, California in 1922. In 1996, it opened a second campus in ...

Art career

Best known for creating strongly colored large scale installations that combine mediums such as print, paint, and drawings, her work has focus on topics such as

colonialism Colonialism is the control of another territory, natural resources and people by a foreign group. Colonizers control the political and tribal power of the colonised territory. While frequently an Imperialism, imperialist project, colonialism c ...

feminism Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideology, ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social gender equality, equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that modern soci ...

, and

. Mukherjee has stated that most of her work comes from a neo-futurist perspective as she aims to generate creative thinking among her audience. She also penned the term "hybrid film" as a label for her animated art that combines painted, photographic, and digital work into unique pieces. Ranu Mukherjee co-founded 0rphan Drift, a collaborative artist and avatar, in London in 1994. For a decade, 0rphan Drift collaborated with numerous people on mostly site-specific works. As an artistic entity, 0rphan Drift is known for immersive and visually complex works which use the sample and the remix extensively. It produced video and AV performance, collage, text and print works, and published the cyberpunk novel ''0(rphan) Four of her short films were noted in the Momentum Cataloge as showing ordinary images "where the social merges with the material" in digital and no-digital realms.

Select exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

*2018 ''A Bright Stage'', de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA *2017 ''Shivery Proof'', Pennsylvania College of Art and Design, Lancaster, PA *2017 ''Shadowtime'', Gallery Wendy Norris, San Francisco, CA *2016 ''Phantasmagoria'', Table Arts Center, Charleston, IL *2015 ''Extracted: A Trilogy by Ranu Mukherjee'', Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, CA *2016 ''Phantasmagoric'', Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles CA *2012 ''Telling Fortunes'',

San Jose Museum of Art The San José Museum of Art (SJMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum in downtown San Jose, California, United States. Founded in 1969, the museum holds a permanent collection with an emphasis on West Coast artists of the 20th and 21st cent ...

, San Jose, CA

Group exhibitions

*2018 "Be Not Still", di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, Napa, CA

Collections

* San José Museum of Art * Asian Art Museum, San Francisco

Publications

* *

Bibliography

* Dance Magazine. “Building Bridges.” Dance Magazine. Dance Magazine, October 1, 2020 * “Ranu Mukherjee.” In The Make. Accessed March 19, 2021 * “Ranu Mukherjee - Gallery Wendi Norris: San Francisco.” Gallery Wendi Norris , San Francisco. Gallery Wendi Norris , San Francisco, October 20, 2020

References

External links

Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mukherjee, Ranu 1966 births Living people 20th-century American women artists 21st-century American women artists 21st-century Indian women artists Academics of Goldsmiths, University of London Alumni of the Royal College of Art Indian women contemporary artists