Returning to Ambala Cantt | Joya Mukerjee Logue’s ‘Those Who Walk Before Me’ at Vadehra Art Gallery

Joya Mukerjee Logue’s roles as memoirist and archivist take centrestage in her India debut, as she studies the people and spaces of her paternal home

On a Tuesday afternoon, we settle down for lunch with artist Joya Mukerjee Logue, after a guided tour of her solo exhibition, Those Who Walk Before Me, at Vadehra Art Gallery. Many of us present — writers and editors — have brought along pieces that hold value of “ancestral memory”. For me, it’s an album with photographs of my mother performing on stage as a singer in the 1960s.

My mother is young, and in one photo accompanied by British-Italian pianist Charlie Mariano, Portuguese-Goan saxophonist Pobreno Dias, and a bassist who is hidden by shadows. My father had taken it. “I love the fact that you brought us these beautiful black-and-white photographs. The handwriting under each image is such a lovely touch, in the age of emails and typed fonts,” she tells me, recalling her days of writing letters to family across her diasporic existence. “I also love the dress your mother is wearing,” she adds, with a laugh.

Mukerjee-Logue engages with themes such as memory, nostalgia, identity, and home in her works. For her latest series, she looks back at her ancestors — her family, relatives and their friends who once lived in and around her ancestral home, Rajo Villa, in Ambala, Haryana. “I grew up in Ohio, but I have always liked the idea of timelessness that India possesses for me — it gives me a rich sense of my history,” she says. “My forefathers migrated from Behala in what is now suburban Kolkata, and then to Ambala nearly two centuries ago, in 1845, to help build a cantonment town for India’s colonial rulers.” She became familiar with her roots through regular trips to the country during her childhood and as an adult.

Mukerjee-Logue likes to call herself a bit of an archivist, memoirist and chronicler.She is also someone who is trying to document her family stories, either visually through her work or through collecting images from the family archive. So, Those who walk before me was like “a homecoming for me”, she says.

The exhibition marks her debut in India, and features 30 oil and watercolour paintings from the Cincinnati-based artist’s decade-long practice, alongside her recent body of work exploring her mixed cultural heritage and personal identity. While her mixed heritage (Mukerjee-Logue, 48, is born to an Indian father and American mother) may play a role in her choice of medium — oil on canvas is essentially a western art practice — her preoccupations are Indian.

Her loose brushstrokes in shades of white, burnt sienna, ochre and red oxide give her work the feel of a photograph with traces of time-wear. Having said that, her creations are very painterly and not photo-realistic. It calls to mind the works of Amrita Sher-Gil, without being derivative in any way. It clearly has the stamp of her inner musings.

On linen canvases, she captures memories of women sweeping through the house, of swishing saris, and the palatial two-storied Rajo Villa with its pillars, arches, courtyards and terraces. Procession, a painting from the perspective of a child looking up at adults, captures four women in white saris mid-stride. Night at Sadar Bazaar, Ambala Cantt records a lively night market scene with the streetlamps lit, overloaded carts and people milling about.