A bundle of twine and difficulties of the tongue: Rina Banerjee

The tongue tells of an accent when it struggles to learn a new language and our sense of self, our confidence is tied to this acrobatic feat and so pleasures in the tongues' ability to grip tight the new language, of a new home can be punishing. In exile or as a refugee or immigrant there is no place left behind, no where to look back upon that delivers comfort easily, pleasures in welcoming platitudes and prickly notes of distress are manifested whispers from below ground as we embrace home on foreign ground. Why do we measure our identity by the distance from our home, a final origin? You and I have counted those steps away when traveling and measured our reach back to divide our humanity to small bits by skin, by tongue by hair by height by no other currency can do this as human currency can. When I have strayed these steps away I can not tell any more with weathered age, why we grow to be more the same and less interested in difference that steps away once made. What then do we have to gain or loose in knowing ourselves better, upon knowing those strangers who pass shoulders with difficult tongues. You may find journey in a more sinus path but they all lead back to ourselves asking, are we at home with ourselves? Even in visible difference like playing cards are we different enough in the global to feel the somewhere else that is not our origin to be also denying parts of land on earth as a genuine home

Ota Fine Arts is delighted to present a solo exhibition by Rina Banerjee.
Born in Kolkata, India in 1963, currently based in New York City, USA. Her love of materials, from heritage textiles and fashion to colonial objects, historical architecture, ethnography and mythology, coupled with the experience of growing up within communities of mixed cultural backgrounds and urban sites provide the content and context for her work. She has been featured at Busan Biennale (2016), "Greater New York" at the MoMA PS1 (2015, 2005), the 55th Venice Biennale (2013), the 7th Asia Pacific Triennale of Contemporary Art (2012), Yokohama Triennale (2011) and the Whitney Biennial (2000). Her work is held in museum collections worldwide, including the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Fondation Louis Vuitton pour l'Art Contemporain, Paris; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; amongst many others.