At the Hepworth Wakefield, Mrinalini Mukherjee: Unbound FormsWomen Sculptors of India and Bangladesh gathers five artistsLeela Mukherjee, Meera Mukherjee, Pilloo Pochkhanawala, Novera Ahmed, and Mrinalini Mukherjeefrom May 23Nov 1, 2026. Set against a 20th century marked by upheaval across the Indian subcontinent, the exhibition foregrounds practices that draw from nature, local communities, traditional craft, European modernism, and myth. While the presentation suggests resonances among the quintetonly two of whom were in each others immediate circlesits strength lies in the breadth and vitality of their work.
Nature animated: serpents, blooms, and metamorphosis
Novera Ahmed and Mrinalini Mukherjee revisit the nagaa shapeshifting, half-human, half-serpent guardian of water. In Ahmeds Snake painting (1973), a fluorescent orange body sprouts human limbs, with sharp fangs and a forked tongue poised to strike. By contrast, Ahmeds bronze Un serpent nomm e9 d e9sir (1972) rises in a gentle undulation, its hooded head meeting viewers with playful poise. Across these works, the naga appears both fearsome and tender. The sculptures threaded coils echo the tactile surfaces of Mrinalini Mukherjees knotted hemp nagasNag Devta II (1979) and Naag (1986)whose symmetrical forms gather folds and bulges that seem to ripple into petals, gills, and stamen.
Mrinalini Mukherjees floral sculptures deepen this sensual register. Adi Pushp I (1997) and Adi Pushp II (199899) draw parallels between human and plant sexuality; in the latter, a tall, shaft-like form crowned with fluid folds surges from a scarred, fleshy crimson opening. Motion and layered time course through the suspended macram e9 Pakshi (1985), where stacked panels evoke a sequence of wings alternately opening and closing from floor to ceiling. Pilloo Pochkhanawalas Germination (1984) places a seed before an aluminum stele that registers its rupturean image Pochkhanawala sharpened in words: A bloom already holds within it the germ of its decay. Mrinalini Mukherjees ceramic Earthbloom (1996) meets it with a bulbous form like a mutated gourd, suspended between growth and decline.
Bodies in performance and in history
Human performers also take the stage. In bronze, Leela Mukherjees Dancers (198182) renders two figures with stout limbs and torsos marked by the artists pinches and squeezes, hovering between figuration and abstraction as if an arabesque might dissolve into lines in space. Meera Mukherjees Violence (1972) knots three spindly bodies into loops and arches that allude to the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War. In a 1971 maquette, Ahmed proposes a monument dedicated to Bangladeshs independence, where towering metal shards stand in for a celebratory crowd, their glimmering surfaces projecting jubilation.
Taken together, the exhibition highlights five distinct voices attuned to myth, matter, and lived histories. Rather than smoothing their differences, it places their multiplicity in view.
