Critics say artist Mrinalini Mukherjee's bronze babies maybe inspired by the myth of Daphne, the nymph transformed into a laurel by her father, but the artist isn't sure herself What do you make out of the six-foot tall bronze idol to your right? Well, Mrinalini Mukherjee wants you to <table style="width: 148px; height: 42px" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" width="148" align="right" border="1"> <tbody> <tr> <td><img alt="" src="/imagedata/2010/apr/Lava.jpg" border="3" /></td></tr> <tr> <td> Gimme morph: Installation from Mrinalini's Cluster, Outcrop and Forest Flame series</td></tr></tbody></table>figure it out yourself. Born to the artist couple Benode Bihari And Leela Mukherjee, Mrinalini seeks inspiration from nature for her bronze work. The result: a bizarre mix of botany and anatomy, which you can witness in town through her exhibition 'Lava'. Some critics relate this anthromorphic merger to the myth of Daphne, the nymph transformed into a laurel by her father to save her from the perseverant passion of Apollo. But Mukherjee isn't sure. "The exhibition deals with my personal feelings about nature; I cannot express them in words (otherwise I would have written a novel), so I am depicting them through sculptures." Labour pain Inspired by natural energies and elements, Mrinalini works intricately with material like wax, rope, clay and metal.u00a0 But it's bronze that this 60-year-old fancies the most. "I have been working for long with bronze now, but I can't shift to gold, as bronze itself is quite tough to work on in this day and age, and expensive, too," she elaborates. The show exhibits 30 bronze sculptures in small, medium and larger-than-life sizes. Through the laborious procedure of weaving, firing and casting, she forms spirals, loops and hollows, which give the installations a heavy vegetal drape, or in other words, "voluptuously enveloping" curves. The objects on display resemble a pot at times, a wineskin at others rounded like a colocynth with its scapes, its leaves and its stems. The leaves grow and spread around the axis as if under the effect of a breath, under the impact of an irresistible force. And yeah, go figure the rest for yourself, and let us know what you thought. Daphne who? DAPHNE was a Naiad nymph of the river Peneios in Thessalia or the Ladon of Arkadia. She was loved by the god Apollon who pursued her until she grew exhausted, cried out to Gaia for help and was transformed into a laurel tree. In a festival at Delphoi, a branch of a sacred laurel tree was fetched to Delphi from the Thessalian vale of Tempe. This rite would suggest that the Thessalian version of the Daphne myth was older. There was also a Delphic myth about Daphnis, an oreiad nymph, who was Gaia's prophetic priestess at Delphoi before Apollon took control of the oracle. Lava At Gallery Espace, 16, Community Centre, New Friends Colony When: April 15 to May 15, 11 am to 7 pm

Critics say artist Mrinalini Mukherjee's bronze babies maybe inspired by the myth of Daphne, the nymph transformed into a laurel by her father, but the artist isn't sure herself

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