Anoushka Mirchandani: My Body Was A River Once
Anoushka Mirchandani: My Body Was A River Once
Institute of Contemporary Art San José · San José, CA · January 16–August 23, 2026
As a frequent collaborator of prolific artist Anoushka Mirchandani, Harlem Frames was presented with the distinct opportunity to custom-frame My Body Was A River Once, Mirchandani’s debut institutional exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art San José.
Curated by Zoë Latzer and comprising entirely Mirchandani’s new work, the exhibition continued to reconcile Mirchandani's tense examination of memory, migration, matrilineage, and the arbitrary and dwindling sense of belonging. Clear across this multimedia exhibit, composed of paintings, silks, sculptures, sounds, and scents, the artist challenges and reconciles the relationship between the body and the environments that encumber it. She aspires to understand how place, ancestry, and displacement contribute to the evolution and questionable fortitude of our identity.
The Exhibition
In My Body Was A River Once, Mirchandani mobilizes her recurring, elegantly phantasmic female figures beyond the domestic environments of previous works and instead transplants them into landscapes of waterfalls, flora, stone, and tree bark. Bodies amalgamate with their chosen surroundings, cultivating fluid spaces in which the boundaries between figure and landscape begin to dissolve into a confluence of rebirth.
Deriving inspiration from the Apsaras, the celestial divinities of water and movement articulated in Hindu and Buddhist tradition, Mirchandani employs these figures to investigate the concept and inheritance of intergenerational memory and the migration of ancestral stories across places and generations in the diaspora.
The exhibition serves as a demarcation of Mirchandani evolving material practice. Works on canvas sit adjacent to diaphanous silks, sculptural wooden forms, and sensory elements, nurturing an environment informed by transformation, lineage, nature, and the perennial search for belonging.
Framed by Harlem Frames
For My Body Was A River Once, Harlem Frames created Mirchandani’s signature custom natural walnut float frames, continuing a framing and fitting collaboration that cemented our friendship.
The float construction creates a considered space between the edge of the canvas and the surrounding walnut, allowing the full painted surface—and the physical presence of each canvas—to remain visible. The natural walnut texture is nothing short of exquisite and smooth. The wood adds a natural warmth and subtlety, ensuring the frame retains a restrained profile as it elegantly embraces Mirchandani's compositions.
That relationship between artwork and frame material was particularly suited to this exhibition. As Mirchandani's paintings bridge the connections between body, land, memory, and the organic natural world, the innate character of the walnut supplies us with a peaceful material that complements the elemental thematics of the artist’s work without interrupting her visual language.
The resulting frames are intended to accentuate the pre-existing definition of Mirchandani’s paintings within the exhibition space. Again, the goal is to never outcompete the work, but to elevate the presentation while allowing the excellence of the work enough room to breathe.
For Harlem Frames, the project reflects the importance of a timeless frame, and perhaps more importantly, finding what fits the client and their needs first. You’d be surprised how loyal you become to a frame when it transforms the reception of the work itself for the better. When working closely with any artist, framing becomes integral to an artist's evolving visual vernacular. This deliberate framing process is developed by understanding the artist’s intention, as much as it about familiarizing oneself with the aesthetics of the work, materials, scale, and the environments in which the work will ultimately be experienced.
Harlem Frames is proud to continue its collaboration with Anoushka Mirchandani and to have had a humble hand in presenting the works in My Body Was A River Once at the Institute of Contemporary Art San José.
Framed with Care, In Harlem.
Artist: Anoushka Mirchandani
Exhibition:My Body Was A River Once
Institution: Institute of Contemporary Art San José
Curator: Zoë Latzer
Exhibition Dates: January 16–August 23, 2026
Framing: Natural walnut float frames by Harlem Frames
Explore the exhibit:
https://www.icasanjose.org/uncategorized/anoushkamirchandanipressrelease/
Anoushka Mirchandani: Everyone You Love Lives Here The FLAG Art Foundation · New York, NY · 2026
As part of the FLAG Art Foundation in New York, Harlem Frames has had the pleasure of framing and installing the works of artist Anoushka Mirchandani in her 2026 exhibit, Everyone You Love Lives Here.
In a curation of both new and recent paintings, Mirchandani’s exhibit investigated identity as an embodied experience—a malleable thing that’s continually shaped and reformed via memory, place, intimacy, ancestry, and the distinct lived experiences of the artist. Echoed across each portrait, domestic interior, and picturesque yet lush natural landscape, reside Mirchandani's ghostly figures traversing between states of contemplation and metamorphosis, a deeper imprint of the artist's own experience of navigating belonging and dissonance that exists between India and the United States.
The Exhibition
Presented at The FLAG Art Foundation from May 27 through July 31, 2026, Everyone You Love Lives Here espoused three essential, interconnected bodies of Anoushka Mirchandani's work. Her paintings invited a dialogue with works by Louise Bourgeois, Cindy Sherman, and Lisa Yuskavage, examining her personal instances of womanhood, memory, nature, and identity, situated prolifically within a broader intergenerational conversation of the female condition.
Mirchandani’s work excavates intimate scenes and richly constructed environments, undulating between the personal and the universal. Family history, domestic realms, South Asian mythology, and the natural environment are designated as sites of intrigue and inquiry, in which Mirchandani ruminates on the ways identity is inherited, crafted, and transmuted through the beguiling but educative experiences of womanhood.
Framed by Harlem Frames
For Everyone You Love Lives Here, Harlem Frames had the privilege of crafting and fitting natural walnut float frames for each of Mirchandani's paintings.
The float-frame construction introduces a subtle but impactful separation between each painting and its surrounding frame, permitting the edges of her works to remain emphatic in color and embrace, while giving each piece a defined architectural dynamism. Natural walnut was carefully selected for its warmth, depth, and understated grain-like charm, complementing the rich colors and intimate character of Mirchandani's paintings without ever competing with them, because after all, a framer’s duty is to never compete, but to accentuate the brilliance of the artwork itself.
The resulting presentation enables the paintings to feel both contained and open to audiences. The slightly narrow visual space created by the float allows each respective work the room it needs to breathe, while simultaneously allowing the walnut to provide a warm material transition between the painted surface and the surrounding gallery’s white space.
For Harlem Frames, the project reflects an approach to custom framing in which material, proportion, construction, and artwork are considered as a single presentation. It’s essential to recall that the frame isn’t fully intended to serve as an enclosure, but rather an extension of how the work is experienced in the exhibition space.
Harlem Frames is proud to have contributed to the presentation of Anoushka Mirchandani's work for Everyone You Love Lives Here at The FLAG Art Foundation.
Framed with Care, in Harlem.
Artist: Anoushka Mirchandani
Exhibition: Everyone You Love Lives Here
Institution: The FLAG Art Foundation, New York
Exhibition Dates: May 27–July 31, 2026
Framing: Natural walnut float frames by Harlem Frames
Explore the Exhibit:
https://www.flagartfoundation.org/exhibitions/anoushkamirchandani
Framing Karl Shakur's Photographs
Harlem Frames is pleased to work with photographer Karl Shakur on the presentation of his second solo exhibition in New York City.
Harlem Frames is pleased to work with photographer Karl Shakur on the presentation of his second solo exhibition in New York City.
Organized independently by Karl as a one day exhibition, the show brings together a selection of photographs from his ongoing practice exploring travel, landscape, culture, and human experience.
We are proud to contribute to the presentation of this body of work and to support an independent artist in bringing his vision from photograph to exhibition.
Karl Shakur
Sunday, December 8, 2024 · 5:30–9:30 PM
132 Bowery, 2nd Floor · New York City
Framing Beyond the Flat Surface
Not everything intended for a frame begins as a flat work of art.
For dimensional work, the frame becomes more than a border. Depth, mounting, backing, glazing clearance, and structural support are considered together to create an enclosure appropriate to both the object and its intended display.
Coins, hand fans, open notebooks, ledgers, textiles, medals, keepsakes, and other dimensional objects each present different considerations for mounting, depth, support, and presentation.
The object itself determines the approach. A coin may require a discreet mount that allows both its form and surface to remain visible. An open ledger needs adequate depth and support while preserving the natural position of its pages. A hand fan presents an entirely different challenge, where its shape, weight, and relationship to the surrounding space become part of the composition.
For dimensional work, the frame becomes more than a border. Depth, mounting, backing, glazing clearance, and structural support are considered together to create an enclosure appropriate to both the object and its intended display.
At Harlem Frames, we approach these projects individually, developing the presentation around the particular characteristics of what is being framed.
Framed Hand Fan — An open folding fan is mounted within a deep, white shadow-box frame, allowing the complete form of the object—including its hanging tassel—to remain visible. The generous space surrounding the fan emphasizes its shape while providing the depth required to accommodate the object without placing it against the glazing.
When a Canvas Float Frame Becomes a Door
A custom canvas float frame designed and fabricated to function as a door for a New York City restaurant, combining artwork, framing and architectural function.
A frame doesn't always end at the wall.
For this New York City restaurant, a canvas float frame was designed to serve two purposes: presenting the artwork while functioning as a working door within the interior.
The challenge was to preserve the visual language of a traditional float frame while accounting for movement, structure, clearance, and the demands of daily use. The result integrates artwork, framing, and architecture into a single functional element.
Framing a Decorative Tile
A dimensional tile presented as an object rather than a flat image. The framing creates space around the piece, allowing its surface, edges, and physical character to remain visible.
This decorative tile is mounted on a thin strainer within a custom float frame. The space around the tile keeps its edges visible and gives the piece a subtle floating effect while highlighting its shape and painted surface.
