Collaboration with Ranu Mukherjee (2017-current)

Since 2017, this cross-disciplinary collaboration between choreographer Hope Mohr and painter Ranu Mukherjee has included gallery activations, embodied storytelling workshops for immigrant and refugee artists, site-specific installations, and museum performances. The two artists have partnered with ARTogether, 836M Gallery, Gallery Wendi Norris, 18th Street Art Center, the San Jose Museum of Art, FOR SITE Foundation, and Mills Art Museum.

float the mark (2023)

A long form improvised duet in response with Ranu Mukherjee’s dance floor drawing, this is a map of a mine in a forest/this is a drawing/this is a dance floor/this is a question/this is an invitation (2023), Karin pigment markers on marley 20 x 21 feet (detail), part of an exhibit at the Mills Arts Museum. Featuring Jay Carlon and Johnny Nguyen (pictured below, on Mukherjee’s floor).

Press review of exhibit and performance at Mills Art Museum.

Ensemble for Nonlinear Time (2021-2023)

Ensemble for Non-Linear Time is a social practice project that responds to rupture with the imagination. A collaboration between choreographer Hope Mohr and visual artist Ranu Mukherjee anchored in a three year process of co-leading embodied storytelling workshops for immigrant and refugee artists, the project featured a cross-disciplinary ensemble of dancers and visual artists including Karla Quintero, Belinda He, Irne Hsi, Claudia Soares, Beatriz Escobar, and Sunroop Kaur.

Ensemble for Nonlinear Time built on a series of workshops held throughout the pandemic for immigrant and refugee artists exploring rupture as a starting point for visioning the future. In the words of Ranu Mukherjee:

For an immigrant and refugee community, the landscape we create in our imagination connects us with the landscapes we have come from and travelled through. We can explore how the natural world is internalized and how as natural beings, we can heal ourselves through the wisdom of the moving body to imagine new ways into the future. Forests have both universal mythical significance and site specific ecological and cultural significance that are currently on the frontlines - this project taps into this powerful combination to allow communities to explore their own stories through a speculative framework.

From an initial workshop series (see “Imagining the Future” below), Mohr and Mukherjee selected participants to engage in a three-month long paid residency February 8-April 28, 2022 at 836M Gallery in San Francisco, along with professional dancers. During the residency, the artists mapped an imaginary forest onto the gallery--a collective landscape where the artists moved to the rhythms of extinct birdsong. The core image of an imaginary forest invited the artists to embody lush internal spaces through movement, drawing and writing. Throughout, Mohr grounded the process in the body by facilitating group movement practices. Mukherjee facilitated a day-long film shoot on a green screen; this footage became two hybrid films shown as part of the project's installation/performance events.

Premiere: Gallery 836M, San Francisco, April 27 & 28, 2022
Additional performances and related video presented by 18th Street Arts Center (Los Angeles), San Jose Museum of Art, Mills Art Museum.

Article in S.F. Classical Voice

Imagining the Future (2020-current)

A multi-disciplinary embodied storytelling workshop series honoring the stories and experiences of immigrants and refugees. Workshops have been held at ARTogether (Oakland) and 18th Street Arts Center (Los Angeles).

Succession (2018)

In 2017, Mohr and Mukherjee developed a performance at the di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art as part of Mukherjee's commission for Be Not Still, Living in Uncertain Times in response to the fires that ravaged the area in 2017.  Mohr and Mukherjee developed the installation and performance through the dancers’ physical engagement with the burned and recovering landscape on the di Rosa property. Featuring dancers Karla Quintero, Suzette Sagisi and Jane Selna, and audio composition by Mike Maurillo.

Now not Now (2017)

Now not Now was a short dance by Hope Mohr developed and presented in conversation with Mukherjee’s exhibition Shadowtime at Gallery Wendi Norris on June 29, 2017, featuring dancers Karla Quintero and Suzette Sagisi. Mukherjee’s dynamic artworks overlay depictions of bodies performing deliberate, urgent actions with expressions of love in an uneasy historical moment. Mohr’s choreography responded with embodied explorations of line, gesture, rhythm, and weight.

Sanctuary (2017)

Mohr worked with Mukherjee to create a performance for the Sanctuary Salon at Fort Mason Chapel as part of the Sanctuary exhibit curated by the FOR-SITE Foundation. FOR-SITE invited 36 artists from 21 different countries to design contemporary rugs reflecting on sanctuary, offering visitors a multiplicity of perspectives on the basic human need for refuge, protection, and sacred ground; Mukherjee was one of the commissioned artists.