Review of Ranu Mukherjee’s “Telling Fortunes”
Mukherjee’s latest exhibit, Telling Fortunes, is on display at the San Jose Museum of Art (SJMA) through January 13. As part of its ongoing series, Beta Space, and in conjunction with the 2012 ZERO1 Biennial: Seeking Silicon Valley, the SJMA commissioned Mukherjee to create two hybrid films that explore how Silicon Valley was shaped.
The first hybrid film, “Nearing and Viewing (Production Through Encounter),” featured random moving images from bees and honey, to a cash register and bricks, to jaguars, lemurs and macaws. Mukherjee’s films are unique because the images and animation seem to just melt into each other, changing the scene so subtly that viewers hardly notice. As though in a dream, the film slowly pans over the fading and changing images before cutting suddenly to new scenes. Through the use of disparate and seemingly unrelated images, Mukherjee makes a statement about the cultural coalescence of Silicon Valley residents, inviting viewers to make their own connections to explain how the images are related.
Personally, I found the content of these images to be intriguing, especially the images and footage of animals from San Jose’s Happy Hollow Zoo, a place I used to visit as a child. However, I failed to see a distinct connection between the images and life in Silicon Valley.
Mukherjee also printed images from her films on silk saris, representing the same themes of her work in different mediums. One of these pieces, “Double Lingham,” is a strikingly beautiful ink on sari work that uses vivid oranges, pastels and greens to represent the lingham and yoni — the union of creative, sexual and spiritual energies as well as good fortune. Mukherjee masterfully layered materials to allow light to pass through the thin saris, elegantly tricking the eye into believing that the images are rising to the surface beneath a luminous sheen. The work was reminiscent of long-lost memories and hazy dreams; though it wasn’t readily apparent what I was looking at, the images were somehow familiar, resonating with me.
The final piece of the exhibit (and the first one visitors encounter) was a soundscape set, “Listening Park,” which is a collaborative installation with sound designer Mike Maurillo. The simulated park consists of a single wooden porch swing, hybrid fruit trees — which produce three types of fruit, symbolizing the tree of life — and speakers. Audio clips of birds and bees are woven together with bits of recorded conversations and Mukherjee reciting pieces of the I Ching. However, random bits of interviews with the zoo-keepers at Happy Hollow Park intermixed with jungle sounds and birds chirping felt ill-fitted and discordant, lacking any sort of melody or coherence. Mukherjee’s melodic voice reciting intermittent recitations of the I Ching at least added some semblance of musical cadence. Even so, the noise of traffic and airplanes taking off from the nearby San Jose Airport often drowned out the audio; but perhaps Mukherjee and Maurillo designed the installation this way on purpose in order to further implicate how Silicon Valley’s tech rise has impacted local nature.
Ultimately, I thought the exhibit was extremely ambitious. Though immigration and nomadic life in the Silicon Valley seems like a narrow topic to explore, Mukherjee’s exhibit proved that it is an extremely rich and diverse theme, drawing on California history and its projected future, the tech industry, and several different and distinct cultures. While Mukherjee’s work displayed these ideas beautifully in her rendered films and images, I wish the connections between the ideas had been stronger to allow for a more unified presentation of thematic elements.
Summary: The artist chose an extremely ambitious theme, drawing on California history, the tech industry and diverse cultures. But though these ideas were beautifully rendered, the connections between them remained weak.
3
Too vague
About the Author
Elizabeth Coleman Elizabeth Coleman is an attorney and writer, born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. She holds a bachelor’s degree in English from UCLA and a law degree from Santa Clara University School of Law, where she received a certificate in public interest and social justice and served as an articles editor on their law review. Apart from her legal career, Elizabeth enjoys writing short stories and dabbling in art (the messier, the better!), and previously was a regular contributor to SWOOP Magazine. She has recently started working on her first book, a young adult fantasy novel about lucid dreaming and parallel realities. Read her blog at www.realitygumbo.com.
Related Posts
Anastasia Alexandrin’s Powerful Female Forms →
Ode to a Coffee Shop →
Saudade →
