Chitra Ganesh: Dreaming in Multiverse open at Frost Art Museum Miami
Chitra Ganesh, Multiverse Dreaming: Black Rose, archival digital print, 2021.
Chitra Ganesh draws on Buddhist and Hindu iconography, science fiction, queer theory, comics, Surrealism, Bollywood posters, and video games, to inform her illustrations and drawings. This exhibition presents a major wall installation, a series of recent prints, and several video animations that exemplify her practice of experimental storytelling.
Thirteen digital prints collectively titled Multiverse Dreaming are inspired by a popular comic book series, issued by the Mumbai-based publisher Amar Chitra Katha in the mid-1960s. The publisher became renowned for its comics and graphic novels rooted in Indian mythologies, folklore, and epic tales. The nonlinear narratives of Ganesh’s prints focus on themes of reflection, regeneration, togetherness, and desire in times of uncertainty. While the imagery taps into a collective memory for many Indians, who have grown up reading these comics, Ganesh stretches the familiar to interweave utopian possibilities into visual idioms and poetic texts.
The project notably centers women and queer relationships, reorienting traditional narratives around experiences and communities that have been marginalized or ignored throughout history and in the contemporary art world. A selection of Ganesh’s animations will be screened, including her latest animation, Before the War (2021). Described by the artist as “an open-ended narrative of memory, love, and loss,” the visual storytelling, combined with music and lyrics by the singer and songwriter Saul Williams, probes how personal and political conflict can generate profound transformation.
This exhibition is curated by Meredith Malone, Ph.D., Kemper Art Museum, Washington University, Saint Louis.
Saturday, January 21, 2023 — Sunday, April 16, 2023