Former planetarium a perfect place to view complex cosmologies that bend myth and gender stereotypes, Galleries West
Chitra Ganesh, “Architects of the Future, The Fortuneteller,” 2014 , portfolio of four woodblock and screenprints with gold leaf (courtesy the artist and Durham Press)
A circular gallery at Contemporary Calgary that surrounds the former planetarium’s dome is the perfect space to contemplate the complex multidimensional cosmology created by Chitra Ganesh. Whether it’s a mural, charcoal drawing, mixed-media painting or animation, Ganesh skilfully bends myth and gender stereotypes to create her own unique universe.
Astral Dance is the first show in Canada for Ganesh, who lives in New York City, and has shown widely in galleries across Europe, South Asia and the United States. Her work, while deeply influenced by early studies in art semiotics and comparative literature at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, is also intuitive, inquisitive and brazenly honest. Ganesh uses the visual languages of surrealism and expressionism, mashing them up with South Asian iconography and pop culture references from comic books, science fiction and Bollywood posters, interweaving imagined pasts with speculative futures in non-linear narratives populated by women who are masked, sprout three breasts or have a tree in place of a head.