Contemporary Conversations Presents:
Chitra Ganesh & Human Capital
Thursday, October 13, 2022
Extended as public programs of Chitra Ganesh: Astral Dance & Human Capital, please join Contemporary Calgary for a series of Contemporary Conversations in celebration of the opening of our fall exhibitions.
Chitra Ganesh: Astral Dance
Doors: 5:30 PM
In-Conversation & Livestream: 6:00PM-6:45 PM
Human Capital
Doors: 6:30 PM
In-Conversation: 7:00-7:45 PM
FREE with registration.
Access to both Contemporary Conversations is included with registration. Chitra Ganesh Livestream registration is separate.
* Unfortunately, due to an elevator error, we are unable to guarantee that the Dome Theatre is 100% accessible to anyone with mobility impairments. Please contact Contemporary Calgary directly at info@contemporarycalgary.com if special accommodations are needed. We will do our best!
About the Speakers
Chitra Ganesh
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.
Tak Pham
CURATOR
Tak Pham is Associate Curator at the MacKenzie Art Gallery in Regina. He holds an M.F.A in Criticism and Curatorial Practice from OCAD University. He has curated exhibitions for the MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina (2019-present); Varley Art Gallery, Markham (2020); Nuit Blanche Toronto, Toronto (2017); Pari Nadimi Gallery, Toronto (2017); Xpace Cultural Centre, Toronto (2017); and Y+ Contemporary, Scarborough (2016), among others. His writings and reviews have appeared in Canadian Art, ESPACE art actuel, esse arts + opinions, GalleriesWest, Studio Magazine, ArtAsiaPacific and Hyperallergic.
Nurgül Rodriguez
ARTIST
Nurgül Rodriguez is an artist with an interdisciplinary practice and a PhD student at Werklund School of Education. She has an active individual practice of disciplines and media including porcelain, installation, handmade paper, printmaking, three-dimensional pieces, and more recently socially engaged and collaborative projects. Her work is social, political and personal with a focus on issues of immigration, diasporas, borders and cultures. She explores becoming a diasporic individual during identity formation within a new culture. Nurgul settled in Calgary in 2009 after many nomadic years of living in Turkey, the United States and Spain with her family. She currently lives in Calgary making, writing, teaching, collaborating and always learning.
Nura Ali
ARTIST
Nura Ali is a visual artist, writer and curator, living and working in Calgary, Alberta. She received a BFA in Visual Art from Emily Carr University of Art + Design, a BA in English Literature, Art History and Italian from the University of Leicester and a BA in History from Goldsmiths College, University of London. Her wide-ranging practice investigates the linguistic scaffolding upholding the assumptions we bring to the act of reading and writing. Alongside her visual arts practice, Nura is also a prolific writer, a lifelong learner and has participated in various national and international residencies. Her work has been shown nationally and received numerous awards and grants; most recently from the Calgary Arts Development, the Rozsa Foundation and the Canada Council for the Arts. When she is not curled up with a book or pottering around her garden, Nura is dreaming up ways to dismantle oppressive structures and for this reason, became one of the founding members of the Vancouver Artists Labour Union; a unionized workers cooperative whose mission it is to transform labour practices in the arts sector and create fair, equitable and sustainable working conditions for artists and cultural workers.
Marigold Santos
ARTIST
Marigold Santos pursues an interdisciplinary art practice involving drawn, painted, and printed works, sculpture, tattooing, and sound. Her work explores self-hood and identity that embraces multiplicity, fragmentation and empowerment, as informed by diasporic experiences. She holds a BFA from the University of Calgary, and an MFA from Concordia University. As a recipient of grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, and the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec, she continues to exhibit widely across Canada. Marigold Santos lives and works in Mohkinstsis/Calgary