Ranu Mukherjee

Ranu Mukherjee (b. 1966, Boston, MA) works across painting, moving image, installation, and performance. Her practice brings together saturated color, layered material processes, and shifting temporal structures to explore questions of visibility, abstraction, ecology, migration, and non-human agency. Drawing on Indian textiles, print, pigment, animation, and choreography, Mukherjee creates densely layered works that reflect on possible futures, diaspora, mythology, and the afterlife of colonial histories.

Mukherjee has presented solo exhibitions at the de Young Museum, San Francisco; the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco; the San Jose Museum of Art; the 18th Street Arts Center, Santa Monica; and the Pennsylvania College of Art and Design, among others. Her work has also been shown internationally in exhibitions and biennials including the Singapore Biennale and the Karachi Biennial. She is the recipient of The Ruth Award, Ruth Foundation for the Arts (2026), the Artadia San Francisco Bay Area Award (2023), and a Pollock-Krasner Grant (2020). Her work is in the permanent collection of the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco; De Young Museum, San Francisco; the JP Morgan Chase Collection, New York; the Kadist Foundation, San Francisco and Paris; the Oakland Museum of California; the San Jose Museum of Art; and the San Francisco International Airport, among others.

Mukherjee co-created Orphan Drift, a London-based cyber-feminist collective and avatar making combined media works since 1994. They have participated in numerous exhibitions and screenings internationally including in London, Oslo, Berlin, Oberhausen, Glasgow, Istanbul, Vancouver, Santiago, Capetown, and the Bay Area.

Mukherjee received her BFA in painting from the Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, MA in 1988, and her MFA in painting at the Royal College of Art, London, UK in 1993. Mukherjee lives and works in Los Angeles, CA, and is Dean of the School of Film/Video at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts).