A Life Less Ordinary

The first work I recall seeing of the sculptor Meera Mukherjee was in 1980—her large and monumental portrait of Emperor Ashoka, titled ‘Ashoka at Kalinga’, placed in the gardens of ITC Maurya in New Delhi. The colossal work, made using the lost-wax process, had towered over her small garden in Bhowanipore in search of a buyer before it was acquired by the hotel chain for its flagship hotel. The victorious Emperor, his warrior’s torso and muscled limbs, the lowering of the sword preparatory to laying it down in repentance for the dead—this extraordinary sculpture served as an introduction to her practice, but Mukherjee’s works were never easy to find if you weren’t a collector. There were no art fairs to suss out her smaller sculptures. Calcutta (now Kolkata) dealers had the privilege of handling her output, but New Delhi was insular and indifferent to a sculptor who brought not the spit-and-polish but the sculptor’s grammar and methodology to wear proudly on the surface of her works.