Rina Banerjee‘s assemblages are fantastical potpourris of color, texture and cultural references. The title of her 20-year retrospective, “Make Me a Summary of the World,” encapsulates her ambition of laying bare the fluid interdependency of ostensibly discrete cultural identities in a world shaped by international trade and colonization. Drawings, paintings, sculptures and installations, with elements from different works mingling in cryptic dialogues with one another, flow whimsically across floors and walls at the Fowler Museum. Banerjee’s profusions of organic and manmade media include feathers, seashells, fur, eggs, skulls, gourds, textiles, furnishings and countless other items sourced from online marketplaces and vendors near her NYC home. Individual components charged with specific cultural and historic significances coalesce into motley hybrids belonging to no one place. Personal experience has informed her work’s multicultural nature. Born in Calcutta, the artist bears vivid childhood memories of how in India, the hue of one’s garments denoted religion and class. When she was 4, her family relocated to London and soon ended up in New York, where they resided in diverse neighborhoods.   As an art student, she became keenly aware of being pigeonholed into Southeast Asian stereotypes despite her cosmopolitan background. Modeled loosely after the Nike of Samothrace, her show’s most impressive piece is Viola from New Orleans-ah… (2017, title abbreviated for length), which references a real-life story of a 1906 marriage between an African-American and a Bengali immigrant in New Orleans. Its heterogeneous protagonist is slightly bent under her own wings’ weight, yet she appears strong and serene, having just alighted in a bed of oyster shells.

Fowler Museum at UCLA
308 Charles E. Young Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90024
Show runs through May 31
Museum temporarily closed