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 brought about by the juxtaposition of an object (the antique embroidery) and a place (Ballarat).
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In 2022 -23, at the Queen Victoria Centre, Banerjee curated Biktoria's Secrets, an experimental durational performance. The audience was invited to one-on-one durational interactions where although momentarily, the artist and the audience member shared the same collegiality and friendship that the women of the Ondormohol shared in the past.
In 2023 -24, Banerjee is examining how the Bengali identity can never surpass the melancholy of the partition of Bengal, the ​​territorial reorganisation of the Bengal Presidency implemented by the authorities during the colonisation of the subcontinent.
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The fourth year of this project is triggered by the artist's nostalgic response to the duplicate architectural plans of the Story Bridge in Brisbane and the Howrah Bridge in Kolkata. A new work will share stories related to two bridges that the British built in two colonies 10,000 km away from each other but are now linked by shared narratives of migrant communities.
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