“America made me great.”
So says artist Rina Banerjee, reflecting on her immigrant upbringing in New York and Philadelphia’s Fox Chase neighborhood, in an interview for the catalog of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts’ new exhibition, “Rina Banerjee: Make Me a Summary of the World.” It is a statement not of egotism, but of slightly grudging gratitude that despite the prejudice and wrong-headedness she encountered, America gave her the opportunity to become herself.
This mid-career retrospective, the largest show ever devoted to the Indian-born American artist, threatens, at least on paper, to be almost too timely. Her issues — globalism, identity, world trade, change in the natural world, the spread of culture, disease, ideas, and money — are the stuff of each day’s headlines.
Fortunately art, when it is good, is not about issues. Instead, it offers visions, ways of looking at the world that reconfigure our thoughts and unleash a flood of feelings.
– Thomas Hines, Philly Daily News
Read more here.
Rina Banerjee: Make Me A Summary of the World is on view at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts through March 31, 2019.
Future venues:
Co-organizer San José Museum of Art, California (May 18 - October 6, 2019)
Fowler Museum at University of California, Los Angeles (December 8, 2019 - May 31, 2020)
Frist Art Museum, Nashville, Tennessee (July 24 - October 25, 2020)
Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina (February 18 - July 11, 2021)