The Guardian reviews *Debjani Banerjee*, an exhibition at the Bluecoat in Liverpool that blends the artist's British suburban upbringing with her ancient Bengali heritage. At its centre sits "Henry-Ganesha", a sculpture that transforms a familiar Henry hoover into the elephant-headed Hindu deity, capturing the "double consciousness" of growing up with more than one cultural inheritance. The show matters because it uses Banerjee's personal, dual heritage to pose broader questions about how communities preserve, adapt and pass on culture in a rapidly changing Britain.

The exhibition combines the domestic and the mythological throughout, arguing that living traditions survive through retelling rather than reverence. A film in a cushioned "music room" collages scenes from two TV adaptations of the Mahabharata (which Banerjee's father made her watch across 94 episodes on the BBC), a photograph of her saree-clad mother holding a Pepsi can on a British hillside, and clips of a CBeebies cartoon character named Cheese that she watched with her daughter. Other works include twin shrines to the demoness Putana and to Cheese, and a patchwork quilt of five female Mahabharata characters made collaboratively with local residents during an earlier Glasgow show. Two looped songs — one by the poet Rabindranath Tagore, one invoking the goddess Kali, both sung by the artist's sister Mita Pujara — anchor the show, which takes its title from a Satyajit Ray film.