Chitra Ganesh and Tausif Noor, BOMB 2020
Ancient mythologies, popular folklore, queer futurisms: in the art of Chitra Ganesh, these seemingly disparate elements swirl together in fantastic combinations as pathways for reconfiguring the present. The Brooklyn-based visual artist’s multivalent practice—which spans drawing, painting, installation, and video—takes cues from the rich visual traditions of South Asia, as well as canonical and contemporary feminist and queer scholarship, and, crucially, her long-standing dedication to collective activism.
While her aesthetic remains eclectic and wide-ranging, Ganesh always establishes intimacy in her work. Amid all the wondrous elements of her practice, within all the myths and legends, is something deeply affective: a sense that both she and her art will meet you, with all of your flaws, wherever you are. I had this hunch when I first saw her work as a student, and it seemed natural, a year later, for me to introduce myself. Nearly five years later, I find myself a grateful member of her community. I called Ganesh via Skype while she was in India, preparing for her upcoming work at the Dhaka Art Summit in Bangladesh. We discussed the importance of intergenerational dialogue, our desi upbringings in New York City, and the links between erotic and aesthetic freedom. What emerged is her ability to make the mundane feel spectacular and, above all, her commitment to shaping a world into its most just and humane form.
TAUSIF NOOR: It’s such a plea - sure to engage with your work—your writing in addition to your visual art—because you do the important, feminist work of citation in the way Sara Ahmed discusses it: ensuring that critical voices aren’t erased. Your art engages critically with such a range of historical and contemporary scholarship. How does your research inform and make its way into your visual art?
CHITRA GANESH: Research and study came to be central components of my practice in a couple of ways. One was through early studies in social theory and deconstruction as tools to access or recuperate historic cultural texts, starting with literature and film, and, gradually, visual art. Research helped me make sense of the many gaps I encountered while seeking certain aesthetic histo - ries, representations, and modes of working beyond Eurocentric canons. These gaps were also attendant to growing up in a diaspora formation and not having the exposure to a quotidian, IRL, endlessly protean, contemporary South Asian culture. During college in the early-to-mid ’90s, this quest led me to one (maybe two) Asian art history classes— invariably focused on East Asia of centuries ago, via objects such as the jade bi or porcelain pot. I remember going to the Met on field trips and seeing ancient temples and bronze statues representing the begin - ning and end of sculpture in South Asia. Those kinds of experiences would make me feel like, Okay, this can’t possibly be everything…there can’t be a huge gap of thousands of years between what gets classified as fine art from certain geopolitical regions and what’s happening now in contemporary art. Cultural studies and anthropology really shed light on those gaps. Two books that helped me are Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object by Johannes Fabian and Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo by Mary Douglas. My partner, who is an anthropolo - gist, shared these with me. Fabian’s text is deeply critical of what he calls the “denial of coevalness”—the Western colonialist framework that insists we exist in the here and now and the Other exists in a different era, denying our shared timeframe. Intercepting that dynamic of certain ideas and objects being located in the past and only retrievable as artifact, not as art, is something I’m keen to trouble by approaching antiquities or archaeological objects in relation to contemporary art practice. There are many productive ways in which the art object and the anthropological object can inform one another. Another aspect of my research is fueled by the pleasure I derive from visual and textual forms outside of contemporary art—science fiction, comics, comic porn, lyric poetry, and more—and the drive to migrate structures and principles of those forms into my work by, for example, exploring drawing through print - making and animation.
