Debjani Banerjee

"I have spent quite a long time thinking about making this piece for you and about you. Ever since I found this image of you on that shelf of albums, full of photographs, from a time before. Since then, I have been wondering - what are you thinking looking out into the hills?"

Comments from the residency

During the Creative Lab residency, I developed two large scale appliqué fabric works which I have been thinking about for some time. Like much of my current work they are rooted in a reconsideration of my past and an empathic rethinking of my parents’ experience. The appliqué banner is a form I have been developing in my practice over the last year but the residency also gave me the opportunity to expand my material practice and visual language through an engagement with ceramics. It also gave me the time to experiment with writing and the space to move/dance, an ever present in both my life and work.

As a first generation British Bengali growing up in England my work begins in a sense of cultural dissonance. Through the lens of personal experience and family histories I explore the special conditions of ethnic minorities, the stresses, the strains, the richness and incongruence caused by belonging to two cultures; my ethnic culture and the dominant culture of the country I grew up in.

Debjani Banerjee is an artist and researcher. Her practice involves performance, dance, textiles, collaboration and learning.