Anindita Banerjee (born 1983, Kolkata, India) is a self-described ‘twice uprooted passenger seat migrant’, moving first to the United States of America and now living on the lands of the Wadawurrung people of the Kulin Nation (Ballarat, Victoria). Never intending to leave her homeland, she grapples with a life that is split across places as she finds and creates a new space for her own experience. Her work interrogates ideas of cultural otherness, authentic identity, and home.
For this new body of work দাদার খোঁজে – Finding Dada, Banerjee combed through the archives of her life to select photographs of significant men in whom she finds reflections of her Dada’s (grandfather’s) facial features. They include family, mentors, friends and cultural leaders across different aspects of her life and communities, including Indigenous Australasian peoples. She overlays their portraits with ritualistic mark-making inspired by her memories of Bengali ceremonies that she has practiced throughout her life. In her reconstr
