Anoushka Mirchandani: My Body Was a River Once

Anoushka Mirchandani: My Body Was a River Once

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.

Major support for Anoushka Mirchandani: My Body Was a River Once is provided by Wanda Kownacki, Nicki and Pete Moffat, and the Miller Coblentz Family, with additional support from Lauren Braun and Adam O’Donnell. Support for programs and exhibitions at the ICA is provided by the City of San José’s Office of Cultural Affairs, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the San Francisco Foundation, Applied Materials, the Lipman Family Foundation, Yvonne and Mike Nevens, and SVCreates. In-kind support provided by Benjamin Moore Paints. In partnership with Jonathan Carver Moore Gallery.

About the Artist

Anoushka Mirchandani (b. 1988, Pune, India) is a San Francisco–based painter and filmmaker. Her work has been presented in solo exhibitions at Jonathan Carver Moore, San Francisco (2025); Yossi Milo, New York (2024); Galerie Isa, Mumbai (2023); UTA Artist Space, Los Angeles (2023); and Rhodes Contemporary Arts, London (2021). Group exhibitions include Exhibitionism, Rajiv Menon Contemporary, Los Angeles (2025); Visible/Invisible: Representations of Women in Art through the MAP Collection, Museum of Art and Photography (MAP), Bangalore (2024); Color Coded, Bode, Berlin (2023); and Winner Takes All, Marianne Boesky, New York (2022).

In 2025, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, screened Mirchandani’s film Landscapes of Longing (2024) as part of its New Directors/New Films series. Her work is held in international public and private collections including the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco; the Museum of Art and Photography, Bangalore; and Northwestern University, Chicago.