How We Get the Job Done: Chitra Ganesh, Juggernaut, May 2019
Chitra Ganesh’s work traverses worlds and realities, exploring history’s feminist and queer stories and imagining the future. Through her long and successful creative journey, Chitra has asserted the critical agendas and visual stories of brown brown artists, keeping alive a needed momentum. Her list of inspirations is vast, from Smita Patil, whom she celebrates for her dark-skinned beauty and commitment to parallel cinema, to Keith Haring for ripping through subway tunnels and advertising space with his drawings, to Phoolan Devi for taking revenge on her attackers and occupying space The visual artist, who is based in Brooklyn, always has several things in process at once.
Who introduced you to art? Who encouraged you?
One of the first people who introduced me to art was an uncle who lived in a neighboring apartment complex in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. He had lots of art books, and when I was fairly young he took me to art openings in the city. My parents also had a great love for arthouse cinema and one of my fondest childhood memories was attending a film festival in 1980 for classic Hindi cinema with them. My first love and home is in drawing. My grandmother taught me how to draw kolam and I also took drawing classes at the back of a real estate office in Queens when my family lived in Hollis, New York. I also remember being really affected by the various sculptures at a Hindu temple in Flushing, Queens, where I took dance classes.
