• Chitra Ganesh

    Date posted: August 16, 2007 Author: jolanta
    I've always been fascinated by how dreams and their repressions shape personal and social crises. My installation, photography and sculptural work is inspired by mythological narratives, present day imperialism, queer politics, lyric poetry and erased moments in South Asian history. Taking these stories and integrating them with my own mythic imagery, the hybrid world of drawing and sculpture articulate both historical conflict and psychic transformation. Much of my visual vocabulary engages the term junglee, an old Indian idiom that describes women who transgress social norms. nyartsmagazine

    Chitra Ganesh

    Chitra Ganesh - nyartsmagazine.com

    Chitra Ganesh

    I've always been fascinated by how dreams and their repressions shape personal and social crises. My installation, photography and sculptural work is inspired by mythological narratives, present day imperialism, queer politics, lyric poetry and erased moments in South Asian history. Taking these stories and integrating them with my own mythic imagery, the hybrid world of drawing and sculpture articulate both historical conflict and psychic transformation. Much of my visual vocabulary engages the term junglee, an old Indian idiom that describes women who transgress social norms.

    I draw from a broad range of source materials including Greek and Hindu myths, 19th century portraiture, legal and activist testimonies, lesbian pulp novels, Bollywood posters and 'zines. Inserting altered imagery into traditional narrative forms, I layer disparate images and include sculptural forms into my large-scale, site-specific drawings to create a space where suppressed stories rise to the surface.

    Recovering buried histories and bringing them into a public and contemporary context have informed my decision to research and work with contemporary and historical political figures and mass mediated imagery. This imagery has not been fully explored and these stories contain question marks that are best articulated through imaginative visual language.

    My processes of installation and collage work, mixing drawing, sculpture and text, initially developed as means through which meaning was generated. The ongoing convergence and friction (both purposeful and unintentional) between visual and literary narrative accomplished this.

    By inserting abject imagery into traditional narrative forms, I want to question societal oppositions of good/evil or compliant/subversive to explore alternate models of female sexuality and power. In re-imagining myths from the perspective of voices they exclude and by challenging traditional images of female sexuality, my work reflects a commitment to queering traditional narratives and related power differentials. I am an out queer in a contemporary art context that is frequently termed as post-race, post-gender and so forth. My creative process seeks to illuminate intersections of race and sexuality in culturally specific contexts, and the crucial role that excavating histories (be it between lovers or empires) plays in attaining a broader understanding of queer experience.

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