From the Depth of the Mould: Meera Mukherjee [Editor : Tapati Guha-Thakurta]

One of the most prolific sculptors of late 20th century India, Meera Mukherjee chose a mode of metal sculpting and a life-style that set her apart from most other artists of her time. The momentous turn in her career came with her decision to undertake a country-wide study of traditional metal crafting communities and techniques. This in turn propelled the radical shift in her choice of sculpting methods and more broadly in her notion of art as labour and collective practice. Even as her work came to widely travel and be exhibited in several solo shows, she doggedly kept to her life of austerity and hard work, in a small rented apartment at Bhowanipur in south Calcutta and in a studio cum casting space at Elachi, on the outskirts of Kolkata, where she seasonally carried out the collective work of casting. In both places, she drew around her a group of artisans and their families, who became her main helping-hand and her alternative community of care and nurture. Her artisanal self-image went hand in hand with her choice of a labour-intensive technique of sculpture-making in the reinvented indigenous lost-wax method of metal casting that she developed over time into her signature art-form. Using a translated title from one of the artist’s own writings, From the Depth of the Mould, the book uses the metaphor of her mould-making and casting process to look closely at the themes of labour and work, material and technique, struggle and resilience in her life story. Like her moulds, the artist’s persona and productions emerge in these pages through layers of different kinds of writing and visual imagery. This is both an art and archival book, presenting hitherto unpublished photographs, personal papers as well as a rich spread of articles, memoirs and images.