Astral Dance opens at Contemporary Calgary
Wolf Watcher’s Dream, 2022
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.