Correspondances in the Woods: Mrinalini Mukherjee at the Met Breuer

It all starts with little wonders, the easily missed but witty type that sparkles with wild imaginations and brings you back to a reunion with nature. Then you see the goddesses arising, myths permeating in the woods, and knots and holes channeling your mind toward an unknown world; but the journey concludes with an intimate conversation where you feel invited to speak and return to nature. Mukherjee’s magnolia flowers are withholding, blossoming, and decaying. Their variation has no intention to glorify the human capacity of imagination, but humbly mediating the undefined force of divinity into a lovable morph. Palmscape IV (2015), the latest piece on show at Met Breuer, offers an instant glance at the artist’s creative process throughout her life. As Mukherjee’s exploration continues, decades of practice culminates with no triumphant laureate but a modest place in nature.

Mrinalini Mukherjee, Met Breuer, July 2019

From the playfully dripping fiber to the unglazed, delicate ceramics, to the confidently detailed bronze, Mukherjee’s choices of material delves deeper into the divine realm with constant personal reflections. It never attempts to proclaim and convince, always remaining open to elastic, contextual renderings. Yet an inherent statement indeed develops and consolidates- the role as a receptacle of nature and divinity. Such assertion breaks down the canonical forms of individual and cultural conventions, pointing to an expansive realm of intellectual and perceptual amazement. When Charles Baudelaire concludes his Correspondances with a hopeful voice for the mankind to engage the spiritual sublime, the former is also endowed with a capacity to speak to every individual reader. Standing in front of Mukherjee’s world of creativity and wonder, each spectator is also granted a place among the woods. 

The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner: Silenced Mental Imagery

And I waterd it in fears, / Night & morning with my tears: / And I sunned it with smiles, / And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night. / Till it bore an apple bright. / And my foe beheld it shine, / And he knew that it was mine.

—William Blake, “A Poison Tree”

The story of The Flamethrowers starts bluntly in an enactment, not at all distant, eerie, or oneiric. It does not evoke any blatant literary tradition that calls for nostalgia or melancholic contemplation. It thrusts the image into audiences and pushes them forward along with the collective wave.

Rachel Kushner, the author of the book, confidently points to the images that sparkle her writing. The image of the female protagonist comes from a 1970s Italy poster—Kushner encounters the image from an archival document—featuring “a woman with tape over her mouth...with a grave, almost murderous look, war paint on her cheeks, blonde braids framing her face, the braids a frolicsome countertone to her intensity.”1

This image is not realized through a plot where the woman becomes a rebel and unfortunately gets captured and imprisoned. Instead, the energy surging below the image fuses into a girl nicknamed Reno because of where she comes from, who acts on her instincts and adventures through the turmoils in the mid-70s Italy and New York City.