Important Notice

Created using the ‘lost wax method’ of casting that the Dhokra and Bastar craftspeople of Central India use in their traditional metalwork, Meera Mukherjee’s bronzes reflect everyday rural and urban life in contemporary India, as well as the country’s ancient folklore and myths. “My work documents the life of the common people – fishermen, weavers, women stitching kantha, commuters in a crowded bus, labourers laying cables, carrying earth. The... Created using the ‘lost wax method’ of casting that the Dhokra and Bastar craftspeople of Central India use in their traditional metalwork, Meera Mukherjee’s bronzes reflect everyday rural and urban life in contemporary India, as well as the country’s ancient folklore and myths. “My work documents the life of the common people – fishermen, weavers, women stitching kantha, commuters in a crowded bus, labourers laying cables, carrying earth. The sculptures also relate to music, dance. I work on two basic principles. One is celebration of humanism and two, a yearning for reaching beyond the quotidian and rejoicing in freedom and liberation” (as quoted in The Margi and the Desi: Between Tradition and Modernity, Gallery Espace exhibition catalogue, 2004, p. 44).

Also a practicing cultural anthropologist, musician, writer, illustrator and social worker, Mukherjee is able to simultaneously convey abstract spirituality, musicality or rhythm and the simple wonderment of a child in her sculptures. Carefully sculpting each component in wax before making a clay mould and then casting the entire sculpture in bronze, Mukherjee’s subjects have a characteristic fluidity that belies the tough metal medium she works with.

In the present lot, a depiction of three joyous fishermen holding up their hands and their net in praise, gratitude or prayer, the artist captures and celebrates the moments of elation contained in the simple and the ordinary. Along with her sculpted figures, Mukherjee includes a separate, traditionally crafted bronze fish in the net, highlighting the ways in which she has translated the local or folk art practice into her modern vocabulary.

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