Ranu Mukherjee

Ranu Mukherjee (b. 1966, Boston) makes hybrid pieces in painting, moving image, and installation. Her practice is marked by a deliberate use of saturated color, the collision of tempos, and sensual materiality. The numerous and often imperceptible layers she employs evoke questions of visibility, legibility and abstraction. Her recent artwork is guided by the forces of ecology and non-human agency, diaspora and migration, motherhood and transnational feminisms.

Mukherjee's work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the 18th Street Arts Center, Los Angeles (2022-2023) de Young Museum, San Francisco (2018-2019); the Pennsylvania College of Art and Design (2017); the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco (2016); the Tarble Art Center, Charleston, IL (2016) and the San Jose Museum of Art, CA (2012) among others. Her immersive video installations have been presented in Natasha, Singapore Biennale 2022-2023, Karachi Biennial (2019) and Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2016) as well as numerous group exhibitions internationally. Mukherjee has been the recipient of the 16th annual San Francisco Bay Area Artadia Awards (2023); a Pollock Krasner Grant (2020); a Lucas Visual Arts Fellowship at Montalvo Arts Center, Saratoga, CA (2019-2024); an 18th Street Arts Center Residency, Los Angeles(2022); Facebook AIR (2020);  de Young Museum Artist Studio Program (2017); the Space 118 Residency, Mumbai (2014); and a Kala Fellowship Award and Residency, Berkeley (2009). Her work is in the permanent collection of the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco; De Young Museum, San Francisco; the JP Morgan Chase Collection, New York; the Kadist Foundation, San Francisco and Paris; the Oakland Museum of California; the San Jose Museum of Art; and the San Francisco International Airport, among others.

Mukherjee co-created Orphan Drift, a London-based cyber-feminist collective and avatar making combined media works since 1994. They have participated in numerous exhibitions and screenings internationally including in London, Oslo, Berlin, Oberhausen, Glasgow, Istanbul, Vancouver, Santiago, Capetown, and the Bay Area.

Mukherjee received her B.F.A. in Painting, from the Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, MA in 1988, and her MFA in Painting at the Royal College of Art, London, UK in 1993. She lives and works in Los Angeles, and is the Dean of the School of Film/Video at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts).