{"id":3386,"date":"2026-09-20T20:27:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-20T20:27:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.echoartfoundation.com\/five-women-many-worlds-unbound-forms-at-the-hepworth-wakefield\/"},"modified":"2026-09-20T20:27:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-20T20:27:09","slug":"five-women-many-worlds-unbound-forms-at-the-hepworth-wakefield","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.echoartfoundation.com\/es\/five-women-many-worlds-unbound-forms-at-the-hepworth-wakefield\/","title":{"rendered":"Five Women, Many Worlds: Unbound Forms at the Hepworth Wakefield"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the Hepworth Wakefield, Mrinalini Mukherjee: Unbound Forms\u0014Women Sculptors of India and Bangladesh<\/em> gathers five artists\u0014Leela Mukherjee, Meera Mukherjee, Pilloo Pochkhanawala, Novera Ahmed, and Mrinalini Mukherjee\u0014from May 23\u0014Nov 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 quintet\u0014only two of whom were in each other\u0019s immediate circles\u0014its strength lies in the breadth and vitality of their work.<\/p>\n

Nature animated: serpents, blooms, and metamorphosis<\/h2>\n

Novera Ahmed and Mrinalini Mukherjee revisit the naga\u0014a shapeshifting, half-human, half-serpent guardian of water. In Ahmed\u0019s Snake<\/em> painting (1973), a fluorescent orange body sprouts human limbs, with sharp fangs and a forked tongue poised to strike. By contrast, Ahmed\u0019s bronze Un serpent nomm\u0000e9 d\u0000e9sir<\/em> (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 sculpture\u0019s threaded coils echo the tactile surfaces of Mrinalini Mukherjee\u0019s knotted hemp nagas\u0014Nag Devta II<\/em> (1979) and Naag<\/em> (1986)\u0014whose symmetrical forms gather folds and bulges that seem to ripple into petals, gills, and stamen.<\/p>\n

Mrinalini Mukherjee\u0019s floral sculptures deepen this sensual register. Adi Pushp I<\/em> (1997) and Adi Pushp II<\/em> (1998\u001499) 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\u0000e9 Pakshi<\/em> (1985), where stacked panels evoke a sequence of wings alternately opening and closing from floor to ceiling. Pilloo Pochkhanawala\u0019s Germination<\/em> (1984) places a seed before an aluminum stele that registers its rupture\u0014an image Pochkhanawala sharpened in words: \u001cA bloom already holds within it the germ of its decay.\u001d Mrinalini Mukherjee\u0019s ceramic Earthbloom<\/em> (1996) meets it with a bulbous form like a mutated gourd, suspended between growth and decline.<\/p>\n

Bodies in performance and in history<\/h2>\n

Human performers also take the stage. In bronze, Leela Mukherjee\u0019s Dancers<\/em> (1981\u001482) renders two figures with stout limbs and torsos marked by the artist\u0019s pinches and squeezes, hovering between figuration and abstraction as if an arabesque might dissolve into lines in space. Meera Mukherjee\u0019s Violence<\/em> (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 Bangladesh\u0019s independence, where towering metal shards stand in for a celebratory crowd, their glimmering surfaces projecting jubilation.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

V\u00eda artasiapacific.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At the Hepworth Wakefield, Mrinalini Mukherjee: Unbound Forms\u2014Women Sculptors of India and Bangladesh (May 23\u2013Nov 1, 2026) presents works by Leela Mukherjee, Meera Mukherjee, Pilloo Pochkhanawala, Novera Ahmed, and Mrinalini Mukherjee, spanning mythic nagas, kinetic blooms, and charged figuration. Highlights include Novera Ahmed\u2019s Snake (1973) and Un serpent nomm\u00e9 d\u00e9sir (1972), Mrinalini Mukherjee\u2019s Adi Pushp II (1998\u201399), and references to the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":3385,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-happening-now"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.echoartfoundation.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.echoartfoundation.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.echoartfoundation.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.echoartfoundation.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.echoartfoundation.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.echoartfoundation.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3386\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.echoartfoundation.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.echoartfoundation.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.echoartfoundation.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.echoartfoundation.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}