mould the wing to match the photograph / Asia Art Archive / Sep 20, 2023 – Feb 29, 2024 /

Humans use knots to keep records, create decor, bind one another and fasten objects. Tying knots is an inherently violent process that strains the rope, bending and crushing its fibres until one day in the future, it snaps under the tension of uneven forces. Our knotting introduces weakness to a cord, slowly draining its strength to serve our goals.

The late artist Mrinalini Mukherjee (1949–2015) formed her art practice around knotted, woven hemp fibre. Her sculptures are monumental, meant to evoke “the feeling of awe when you walk into the small sanctum of a temple and look up to be held by an iconic presence”, as the artist said. To present her work in Hong Kong, Asia Art Archive’s team installed one sculpture by Mukherjee, Pari (1986), at the entrance of its library. The rest of the showcase highlighted the modernist sculptor’s career and an archive created by indexing nearly 2,400 pieces of media, including drawings, photographs, written correspondence, documents and more.

The exhibition was called mould the wing to match the photograph, a phrase drawn from the handwritten instructions meticulously drafted by Mukherjee’s husband, Ranjit Singh, recording each sculpture’s dimensions, directions for handling and requirements for display. Every fibre sculpture created by Mukherjee, including Pari, came with its own set of directions, complete with photographic documentation.

Mukherjee’s various interests intersect in her sculptures. Pari’s title means “nymph” and points to her obsession with India’s myths, while the artwork’s physical form links up with the artist’s fascination with the world of plants, as well as the visual grammar of ancient temples and performative disciplines that channel age-old stories.

As a viewer of mould the wing, it was easy to drift into the academic considerations surrounding Mukherjee’s work—the exhibition’s framing actively steers visitors in that direction. But it’s just as engaging to consider that the presentation of Pari is exactly as the artist intended, mounted the same way no matter when and where the sculpture is shown. There’s a strong sense of legacy, of shaping culture for posterity, even though the artwork’s main material will eventually disintegrate.

mould the wing was a deceptively tough presentation to fully take in. Along Pari, the curators—Noopur Desai, Pallavi Arora and Samira Bose from Asia Art Archive in India—presented a range of images and information drawn from Mukherjee’s archive. Lightbox vitrines housed hundreds of 35mm slides showing other fibre sculptures made by the artist. Singh’s handwritten installation instructions, blown up to span from floor to ceiling, made it easy to see the degree of detail demanded by Mukherjee when she sent artworks abroad for exhibitions. Photos snapped during the artist’s travels—for instance, to Angkor Wat—were hat tips to her many visual and thematic references. A few books from Mukherjee’s shelves highlighted her varied interests, from “village technology” in the Andes to the life of flora.

The faded red hue of synthetic dye tingeing the cords that form Pari marked the passage of time, a visual rhyme with some of the film slides in Mukherjee’s collection that were losing vibrancy with age.

Even though Pari was the exhibition’s centrepiece, it was the Mrinalini Mukherjee Archive, painstakingly digitised by the team at Asia Art Archive, that was the real main character of mould the wing. The collection of images and documents contextualised the artist’s life and work, plugging visitors into the academic bent of the show. There were spiritual overtones, too—if the sculpture was mounted to be a source of awe, then the Asia Art Archive’s library was, temporarily, the temple housing it. 

This is perhaps Mukherjee’s legacy. Her artworks don’t just “[need] space all around”, as her instructions say. They transform the air around them with a sense of patience and mythic monumentality, carrying forward the meticulous care that went into knotting her art.

Featured image: Mrinalini Mukherjee, Pari (Nymph), 1986, dyed hemp, 220 x 83 x 42 cm. Courtesy of Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi. Photo: South Ho.