Chitra Ganesh. Pussy Riot, 2015. Acrylic, faux flower petals, textiles, tinted plastic, rope, broken mirror, faux fur, leather, glitter and glass on canvas. Collection of Tad Freese & Brook Hartzell.

Chitra Ganesh
Astral Dance

13 October 2022 – 9 April 2023

Contemporary Calgary is pleased to present Astral Dance, the first solo exhibition of works by Chitra Ganesh in Canada, and a significant survey of her practice spanning more than twenty years.

At its core, Ganesh’s work engages with aesthetics and subject matter that elude national and conceptual boundaries that often perpetuate an “othering” of historically marginalized subjects and narratives. Drawing upon iconography from the South Asian subcontinent, science fiction, queer theory, vintage comics, Surrealism, Bollywood posters, and more, Ganesh delivers fantastic, dreamlike worlds where the past, present and future are merged into new, speculative propositions.

Astral Dance brings together drawings, paintings, photography, collages, wall installations, animations and sculpture in a site-specific exhibition that reveals the depth and diversity of Ganesh’s practice. Whether through multi-panel comic installations or large immersive murals with three-dimensional elements, her hybrid cultural visions challenge perceived ideas of sexuality, power, desire and authority. Her early comic series, Tales of Amnesia, recontextualizes the widely read comic Amar Chitra Katha, a collection of instructive children’s stories based in Hindu mythologies and Indian history. She transforms these folk and children’s forms into non-linear narratives replete with enigmatic female protagonists that destabilize meaning, tradition, and authenticity. Elsewhere she invokes the world of silent cinema with dramatic charcoal renderings of iconic moments from Karma (1933) or Metropolis (1927), exploring the relationship between science fiction, epic myth, and Orientalism. Throughout Astral Dance, Ganesh weaves everyday life with the magical, mythological, and erotic, offering seductive new narratives swirling within realms of possibility.

About the Artist

Chitra Ganesh (b. 1975 Brooklyn, New York, USA) received a BA in Art-Semiotics and Comparative Literature from Brown University, Providence, RI in 1996. She attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2001 and received her MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University, NY in 2002. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, USA.

Across a twenty-year practice, Chitra Ganesh has developed an expansive body of work rooted in drawing and painting, which has evolved to encompass animations, wall drawings, collages, computer generated imagery, video, and sculpture. Through studies in literature, semiotics, social theory, science fiction, and historical and mythic texts, Ganesh attempts to reconcile representations of femininity, sexuality, and power absent from the artistic and literary canons. She often draws on Hindu and Buddhist iconography and South Asian forms such as Kalighat and Madhubani, and is currently negotiating her relationship to these images with the rise of right wing fundamentalism in India.

Ganesh's work has been widely exhibited in the United States and internationally, including solo shows at Brooklyn Museum, NY,USA; MoMA PS1, NY, USA; The Kitchen, NY, USA; The Rubin Museum of Art, NY, USA; The Andy Warhol Museum, PA, USA; Gothenburg Kunsthalle, Sweden; and Times Square, NY,USA. Her work has also been exhibited in important group exhibitions at The Walker Art Center, MN, USA; the Baltimore Museum of Art, MD, USA; The Queens Museum of Art, NY, USA; The Asia Society, NY, USA; The Bronx Museum, NY, USA; The Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX, USA; the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, CA, USA; the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, CA, USA; the Boca Raton Museum of Art, LA, USA; the Hayward Gallery, London, UK; Saatchi Museum, London, UK: Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Italy; Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno, Italy; the ZKM Center for Art and Media, Germany; Göteborgs Konsthall, Germany; Arthotek Kunstverein, Göttingen, Germany; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai, China; the Gwangju Contemporary Arts Centre, Korea; the Prince of Wales Museum, Mumbai, India; Indira Ghandi National Centre for Arts, New Delhi, India; Devi Art Foundation, India; the Kochi Biennial, India; the Dhaka Art Summit, Bangladesh among others.

Ganesh’s work is represented in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, NY, USA; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA, USA; the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, USA; The Brooklyn Museum, NY, USA; The Art Institute of Chicago, IL, USA; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; The Ford Foundation, NY, USA; University of Michigan Museum of Art, MI, USA; The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, PA, USA; the Devi Art Foundation, India; Kiran Nadar Museum, Delhi, India; the Saatchi Collection, London, UK; Burger Collection, Hong Kong; Deutsche Bank, among others.

Ganesh is the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, including grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts; Printed Matter; the Art Matters Foundation; the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in the Creative Arts; the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award for Painters and Sculptors; and the Hodder Fellowship from the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University, and the Pollock Krasner Foundation.