Promise Me
Cheryl Mukherji
Cheryl Mukherji. Promise Me. video. 2020.
Found surveillance footage, spoken word, found and recorded audio; is a collection of live surveillance footage of my mother in our home in India as viewed and recorded on my device in New York between 2018 and 2020. The cameras were installed in our family home to watch over our sick pet five years ago. After our pet passed away, no one removed the cameras and they continued to watch us. I regained control of the surveillance camera to watch my mother, embracing my role as a caregiver to her and resolving my homesickness in a new country. The video is accompanied by spoken word, recordings of conversations with my mother, and songs played, hummed, and sung to each other through a distance of 8500 miles and a time difference of 9 hours between us. Using surveillance as a medium to watch my mother out of concern for her health, I subvert the oppressive nature of surveillance as a medium to track and control marginalized bodies throughout history and contemporary governance, raising questions on privacy, control, intimacy, and the work it takes to stay related to someone, even my mother.
Cheryl Mukherji (b. 1995) is an Indian visual artist and writer based in Brooklyn, New York. In her work, Cheryl explores the idea of origin and inheritance, which is embedded in the figure of her mother and her presence in the family album, using photography, text, video, and printmaking. Cheryl was the winner of the 97th Annual at the Print Center, Philadelphia, 2023 and a finalist at the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition, 2022 at the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian. She is the 2024 Workspace Artist-in-Residence at Penumbra Foundation and has previously held residencies Stoneleaf Retreat, 2023, Center for Photography at Woodstock, 2022, and Baxter Street at Camera Club of New York, 2021. Her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions at the Museum of the City of New York (US), PHOTOFAIRS (US), Printed Matter (US), The Print Center (US), National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian (US), Baxter St. at Camera Club of New York (US), Capture Photography Festival (CA), Minnesota Museum of American Art (US), Huxley-Parlour Gallery (UK), Format Photo Festival (UK), Brooklyn Museum (US), Museum of Moving Image (US), International Center of Photography (US), Serendipity Arts Festival (IN), among others. Cheryl’s works are in collections at the Harvard Art Museums and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. She holds an MFA in Advanced Photographic Studies from ICP-Bard College, New York, 2020, where she was also the recipient of the Director's Fellowship.