Cheryl Mukherji
The Last Time, Text on screenprint, 2020
Cheryl Mukherji (b. 1995, India) is a visual artist and writer currently based in Brooklyn, New York. She graduated with an MFA in Advanced Photographic Studies from the International Center of Photography-Bard College, New York in 2020. In her current work, Cheryl explores the idea of origin and inheritance, which is embedded in the figure of her mother and her presence in the family album, using photography, text, and video. Cheryl is a finalist in the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition 2022 at the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian and a current Workspace Resident at Baxter Street at CCNY, New York where she will also host her debut solo show in January 2022. Previously, Cheryl has been the recipient of Capture Photography Festival’s Writing Prize 2020, Brooklyn Museum’s #Your2020Portrait Award 2020, South Asian Arts Resiliency Fund (SAARF), Firecracker Photography Grant 2020, and was nominated for the inaugural Next Step Award by Aperture Foundation. Her work has been exhibited at the Minnesota Museum of American Art (US), Huxley-Parlour Gallery (UK), Format Photo Festival (UK), Brooklyn Museum (US), Museum of Moving Image (US), International Center of Photography (US), Serendipity Arts Festival (IN), among others.
Still from Promise Me, 2020
Can you tell us a bit about the process of making your work?
My current work is about my origin, inheritance, which is embedded in the figure of my mother and her presence in my family albums. It deals with memory, personal history, transgenerational trauma, and how they inform identity. My process of making work moves through stages, beginning at reading—accruing books, heavily annotated essays, and bookmarked tabs online—about the themes I am interested in exploring in the work. I slowly transition into making notes and writing about the work before I even begin to physically make it, so it is safe to say that I approach photography through text. I think about domestic labor often in my work, not washing dishes, but the work it takes to stay related to someone, even my mother who lives across distance and time zones. I work with photography, text, video, printmaking to realize these ideas. My process is slow and intuitive, structured within daily routines and bursts of art-making in my living room which alternates as my studio. An important part of my process is having conversations and collaborating with other artists, as much as it is the personal endeavor of hunkering down and doing the work.
Tell us more about your work in the show.
I Held My Mother, Hand-embroidery on cotton lawn, 2020
I have been watching my mother through a live surveillance feed since January 2019. The cameras were installed in the living room, backyard, and other common spaces of our home to watch over our sick dog five years ago as and when we were unable to be there for her. No one bothered to pull it down after she passed away. It kept watching us for many months after I moved to New York City from India.
Promise Me is a video installation—a collection of surveillance footage viewed and recorded on my phone. It is accompanied with spoken word, recordings of conversations with my mother, songs played, hummed, and sung to each other over the phone through a time difference of 9 hours and 30 minutes between us.
I use surveillance as a medium to understand my role as a caregiver to my mother. Having outgrown our customary mother-daughter roles through distance, I watch her out of concern for her health, and my homesickness in the face of my dislocation in a new country. Subversively, it becomes a tool for intimacy, longing, and caregiving across 8,000 miles.
What are some references you draw upon in your work? Are there any themes in particular that you like to focus on when creating?
I draw a lot of my references from vernacular archives, family albums, and the non-fiction, poetry, auto-theory books I read. Some texts that I have gone back to over the course of making my current work are The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson, Reading Boyishly by Carol Mavor, The Mother in The Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Elissa Marder, Family Frames by Marianne Hirsch, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong, several texts by Roland Barthes, Anne Carson, Hito Steyerl, among others. I draw references from the works of many contemporary women artists who use text, image, and theory in their process, like Carrie Mae-Weems, Adrian Piper, Roni Horn, Moyra Davey, Shahzia Sikander, Ana Mendieta, Jo Spence to name a few, as a way to be in conversation with them. I am currently focussing on themes of memory, personal history, transgenerational trauma, and mother-daughter relationships.
Still from Promise Me, 2020
Where are some of your favorite spaces that support contemporary art or design? Now that the art has an online presence, has that changed?
People would hate me for saying this, but my favorite place to see art is on my phone or laptop, mostly because it is where I can afford to spend my time viewing and experiencing art. As someone who went to graduate school for art without formally studying or practicing it before, the internet has been the best place to learn. Even before the pandemic forced art to be experienced online, a lot of people who did not have access to museums and art institutions, like myself, experienced it exclusively online. Having said that, some of my favorite physical spaces to see art in now as well as that support contemporary art or design are the Brooklyn Museum, The Studio Museum, and the Bronx Museum in NYC.
Who are some of your favorite artists? Or who has been inspirational recently?
I mentioned some of my favorite artists above but more recently, I have been inspired by the labor and love in the works of my friends, both offline and online, who work in different mediums like textile, sculpture, writing, and performance.
Do you have any shows coming up? Anything else you would like to share?
I currently am part of a group show ‘Sutures’, curated by Michael Khuth, up at the Minnesota Museum of American Art. I have my debut solo show opening at the Baxter Street at CCNY, New York in January 2022 which I am thrilled to be working towards, a group show ‘Family Album’ opening at the Capture Photography Festival in March 2022, and a group show at the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian in April 2022, as a finalist for the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition 2022.
Cheryl Mukherji’s work is included in our show “Time Wont Tell,” November 3rd - December 30th, 2021. Visit her website here or her Instagram @cherylmukherki