Anoushka Mirchandani: My Body Was a River Once Opening Reception

My Body Was a River Once is the debut institutional exhibition by India-born, San Francisco–based artist Anoushka Mirchandani, curated by Zoë Latzer. Featuring an entirely new body of work, the exhibition engages the senses—sight, sound, and smell—to explore memory, matrilineage, and the ways migration and place shape identity and agency.

For nearly a decade, Mirchandani has developed a distinctive visual language centered on translucent, introspective female figures often situated within domestic interiors. In My Body Was a River Once, these figures break free from built environments, merging with waterfalls, flora, stones, and tree bark in fluid metamorphoses that blur the boundaries between body and landscape.

Drawing inspiration from the Apsaras—celestial beings in South Asian mythology whose name translates to “one who moves flowingly in the waters”—Mirchandani reimagines these mythic figures as vessels of intergenerational movement, carrying ancestral stories across terrains both real and imagined. Expanding her practice beyond painting, she incorporates diaphanous silks, sculpted wooden thorns, and subtle aromas to create a multisensory environment. Together, these works form a living archive that reflects on belonging, inheritance, and transformation through the lens of mythmaking and migration.

More details on the opening receiption will be announced in the coming weeks.

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Host or Publisher Institute of Contemporary Art San José