ARTAFRICAREVIEWSHUMAN TRAFFIC / ALLIE BISWAS
branches of blooming blue flowers. Rising from beneath her appears to be a daunting
volcanic landscape, dominated by oozing green lava. Using these opposing environments,
Banerjee indicates the compromised and in-between nature of circulatory experience,
where women are often the first to be used as a medium of exchange themselves. Soldier:
overseas and out of place his species seeded dead to grow as common place, bore beautiful flowers of
wound, carnage discovered a resin sticky like sweat. He had courage and loyalty when everyone wept and
came home while we slept (2014) makes reference to episodes of war and carnage, a significant
feature of global mobility. The body of the sculpture consists of a vertical tripartite
structure. A porous brass lantern – whose pitted surface patterning is reminiscent of
bullet holes – holds a wire cage above it, onto which has been positioned a small red skull
and a figurine denoting a child (perhaps a reminder of the barbaric reality of sending
children to fight). Underneath the lantern hang three shapely gourds, which evoke body
parts.In the next gallery (the main room) the sculpture Make me a summary of the world, she
was his guide and had travelled on camel, rhino, elephant and kangaroo, dedicated to dried plants,
glass houses – for medical study, vegetable sexuality, self-pollination, fertilization her reach pierced the
woods country by country (2014) stood out, occupying an entire corner. Placed on top of a
pedestal close to the ground, the sculpture stands over two metres high, encompassing
two paper umbrellas, plastic black horns, a wooden rhinoceros, a shell, ceramic doll
and a plastic grapevine. The effect was one of magnitude and cohesion. Here, Banerjee
attempts to bring the multifarious nature of place – in this case, the world – closer to
home, assembling it all together in one location for the viewer to access in one go.‘Human Traffic’ demonstrates Banerjee’s unique skill for elucidating our present-day
condition in which the role of movement is played out in a myriad of formats. Through
the disparate and mythological, the multiple perspectives of Banerjee’s art allude to the
possibility of connectivity where cultural and geographical gaps are closed.Allie Biswas is a writer and researcher. She is based in London and New York.‘Human Traffic’ ran from 12 September - 24 October 2015 at Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris.3/4 ARTAFRICA