About
The Project
ONDORMOHOL is a multi-year, creative practice led research project where Anindita Banerjee explores themes of memory, displacement and home through the lens of being a Bengali girl living in regional Australia. The juxtaposition of an object and a place creates for her a third space that is not real or tangible but fantastical, conceived through the sense of being in multiple places at the same time.
The Context
Growing up in Kolkata within an urban postcolonial cityscape, Banerjee was fascinated by the crumbling rajbaris, the large mansions built during the Victorian era. Stimulated by stories of that era, she day-dreamt about what those buildings might have looked like in their prime. Years later, the streets of Ballarat, evoked a sense of familiarity, a third space, as if she had time-travelled. At a similar time, Banerjee unexpectedly inherited a piece of antique embroidery from early 1900s which pushed me further into this world of imaginings – a muddled reality of being here (Ballarat), there (Kolkata in 1990s) and there (Kolkata in early 1900s).
The Content
At the Art Gallery of Ballarat in 2021-22 Banerjee captured the visual imaginings of a Bengali girl living in regional Victoria, formed through the juxtaposition of an antique Bengali embroidery and the colonial architecture of Ballarat.
In 2023 -24, Biktoria's Secrets, an experimental performance at the QVWC, where audiences invited into one‑on‑one durational encounters, momentarily recreating the intimacy, camaraderie, and quiet solidarities of the women’s inner quarters.
In 2024 -25, Banerjee examined examined the melancholy & fragmentation inherent in Bengali identity after the Partition of Bengal & the colonial restructuring of the Bengal Presidency.
In 2025 -26, গল্পেরসেতু / STORY BRIDGE, explores migrant memory and longing through the duplicate architectural plans of the Howrah Bridge in Kolkata and the Story Bridge in Brisbane.