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RINA BANERJEE:  Blemish, In Deep Pink Everyplace Begins
May 15-September 4

Born in Kolkata, India, and based in New York, Rina Banerjee produces eclectic art that reflects her transnational background. Her paintings and drawings take on a mystical tone depicting female figures transforming into hybrid birds and beasts. $5-$7. Hunterdon Art Museum, Clinton (hunterdonartmuseum.org; 908-735-8415). 

About the Exhibition (from Hunterdon Museum website):

Where we begin at birth a homeland, my town, your town, a geographical cradle, a cultural incubator determines the directions we will choose to travel later.  The scattering of people who are seemingly chosen and chose to fly away from origin to venture out simultaneously limit where and with who these movements can reveal about us, like traveling garments tightly folded or yarn rolled into compact balls they do not open, unwind kept tidy and portable.
 
Our early experience that anchor us in one place in one culture violently resist the largest place as home, the world and paired with human culture. In resistance we carry a blemish, a unique birth mark that remains tender, pink and exposed. We wander away in journey to find that the individual is neither real /imaginary, it is a self-contained, stain, wound, blemish and the world is made imperfect and real considering its presence. The  future is made out of blemish and draws upon it know its path forward ignite by its charge. Thewith complete joy and love we fill all gaps of difference to connect as would bridges under turbulent waters where we are marked who we are as seen by others is attached to origin. origin is no place at all and can only be fabricated out of difference, division designed out of exclusion. Country as home is a contemporary concept riddled with empires project and imperialism ambition can grow to expand, coalesce into one place, locations united connected and realized as many needs no beginning no ending. Origins are places that bring recognition to know self before the self can materialize. The works shared in this exhibition travels to consider beauty, culture and the gendered dislocation that create new connections to the agency and the self under recognized.