On Friday, February 18, the AAPNYC Seminar class went to see Ursula von Rydingsvard Sculpture, 1991-2009, at The Sculpture Center in Long Island City. You can find out more about the exhibition here:
http://sculpture-center.org/exhibitionsExhibition.htm?id=75981
Here are the reviews for this exhibition.
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Review of Ursula von Rydingsvard at the Sculpture Center
Ursula von Rydingsvard’s show “Sculpture 1991-2009” at the Sculpture Center is dazzling. The sheer workmanship that Rydingsvard applies to each of her regal monumental cedar and resin sculptures was breathtaking. The Sculpture Center only contributed to the beauty of the works being the perfect setting to house these larger than life works, with its high ceilings and outdoor garden space, allowing her sculptures to fill the room as they stretched towards the ceiling and expanding across the floor and wall.
The show consists of Rydingsvard’s wooden works as well as one of her resin works that occupy the main floor of the Sculpture Center. These works as the title of the show implies are several of the pieces that have given Rydingsvard her renown in the art world as they span a period of eighteen years. Upon entrance into the show, the viewer understands who Rydingsvard is as an artist, as her works dominate the space and attest to Rydingsvard’s skill and address the themes of nature and domesticity
The works themselves seem timeless as they simultaneously carry the appearance of the archaic and the modern. And her manipulation of the material makes one in awe of the works’ physical presence. Furthermore their shapes evoke a sense of recognition on part of the viewer as certain shapes such as the plate, the spoon, and the bowl allow the viewer to form a personal association with the work. In addition, despite their domineering presence there is a playful nature about them, making one wish to crawl into or enter into one of the bowls or tunnels that Rydingsvard creates within her sculptures. This aspect of the work returns to the fact that the spaces within her sculpture evoke a familiar shape.
The layout as mentioned before, contributed to the dynamic nature of the show. The juxtaposition of her towering cedar structures to her expansive wall and floor structures allowed for the viewer to easily grasp an understanding of Rydingsvard’s work. The relatively smaller resin sculpture outside the Sculpture Center invites the viewer in, as its bluish glow and rock like shape evokes cavern gemstones and crystals as well as the glow of the ocean. And once inside the viewer enters into a large space with high ceilings giving life and breath to the works. The one work, which is separated by a wall, “Ocean Floor,” stands alone, but its massive and expansive nature fill every corner of the space. This separation allows the piece to shine and stand out, where it might otherwise be lost amongst her other works that are juxtaposed in the other room.
“Ursula von Rydingsvard: Sculptures 1991-2009” is a terrific show that emphasizes the skill and creativity of the artist and is displayed in a manner that highlights all the work and connects them all to the artist Ursula von Rydingsvard. The show, the works, the workmanship of the works, and the connections felt to the natural material and the familiar shapes, proudly state the greatness of Ursula von Rydingsvard.
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Having never been to SculptureCenter before, seeing the size and form of Ursula von Rydingsvard’s “Sculpture 1991-2009” exhibition within the large warehouse space was pretty amazing upon first entry. The semi-abstract wooden sculptures were reminiscent of ancient monuments or forms of fantasy, scattered throughout the space. The large pieces were beautifully crafted and assembled to give a feeling of the interaction between the human and nature. Although I experienced a certain shock due to the ancient monumental feel of Rydingsvard’s works, for many of the pieces I found myself staring up at the massive ceilings of the SculptureCenter after a minute. This was not out of a sense of boredom as much as it was a sense of distraction due to the overpowering surrounding space.
The work seemed to reference earth art, but rather than emphasizing the ephemeral, it stressed the artifact and the object as a sort of relic. The large wooden forms reminded me of Andy Goldworthy’s large stone cairns and earlier works such as Robert Smithson’s “Spiral Jetty,” but at the same time ancient or mystical ruins or monuments. This play between the mystical and odd as well as human interaction with nature came through, but it wasn’t fully stimulating to me.
The press release for the exhibition emphasized the “great psychological force and powerful physical presence,” of von Rosingvard’s work. While this may have been present, the work did not have a significantly striking impact on myself. The effectiveness and mysterious nature of the sculptures seemed to be limited by their surroundings. Although the sculptures were of enormous size, the space around them was even larger. Rather than the space emphasizing the works, the works seemed to be emphasizing the large room and very large ceilings. The lack of interesting interaction with the space around the sculptures kept them from realizing their potential.
The one work that was very successful at defying this critique, was “Ocean Floor,” a large wooden bowl that occupied an entire smaller room off of the SculptureCenter main floor. With dried cow intestines hung around the edges, this piece had a similar aesthetic as Rosingvard’s other work, but the interaction of this giant 13-foot bowl and the small room helped emphasize the nature of artifact and mystery within the piece itself. The other works may have accomplished a similar effect had they been in spaces that were smaller and served to emphasize rather than distract from the large wooden sculptures.
Friday, February 25, 2011
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Reviews of Artist Chitra Ganesh
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On Friday, February 2011, Artist Chitra Ganesh visited the AAPNYC Seminar Class to discuss her work and career. Below are some reviews of her art work. You can see and read more about Chitra Ganesh's work here, http://www.chitraganesh.com/
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Chitra Ganesh’s art work raises issues of identity and social roles within the realm of art historical positioning. Ganesh’s work challenges the viewer to reassess their concept of high art and their knowledge of western art history. Though deeply rooted in classic art historical references, Ganesh’s work pushes beyond the canon and calls attention to the experience of the marginalized.
Through the incredibly complex use of visual signifiers, Ganesh is capable of deconstructing and reimagining forms that are typically meant for children. Bright colors, floral patterns and the use of glitter attract the unsuspecting viewer. Yet, upon closer inspection, Ganesh’s work reveals meanings deeply grounded in the world of adults. By occasionally working in a comic book medium, Ganesh is exploiting the low brow while simultaneously making her art accessible. This idea is reminiscent of Rosler’s discussion of the art world as a mirror in her essay, “Place, Position, Power, Politics”. On page 58 of the article Rosler suggests that art be a mirror through which society is distorted and reflected. This fragmented and altered reflection has the familiarity of reality yet with the heightened truth that is only revealed through seeing beyond the real.
Additionally, Ganesh’s work also thrives on the “gaps” in society. She believes that gaps are fertile locations for determining “what could be”. The idea of expansion and exploring beyond what is commonly understood or accepted is central to Ganesh’s work. Such gaps are also utilized as a means of expressing her inspiration. Hindu and Buddhist mythology, science fiction and religious iconography all play a key role in her multi-media endeavors. By creating
with the “discarded” moment in mind, she exploits the idea of the “ethnic specimen” in her works, but most clearly in photographs. The “Hidden Trails” series is derived from National Geographic images she was exposed to as a child. The photos from the series fetishize the “other” through the gaze of the western man. This idea mirrors Edward Saïd’s discussion of orientalism and colonialism. In many ways Ganesh’s art serves as a visual representation of the imbalanced critique between East and West.
When discussing her work, Ganesh mentioned that she often considers the visual frame of her audience when deciding which images to create and how to hang her work. By creating in the monumental scale, Ganesh asks her viewer to get lost in her imagery and to take account of how the experience changes their view of the world around them. The act of getting lost is a pervasive theme in Chitra Ganesh’s art. While some artists dwell in the absence of boundaries, Ganesh uses that space as a means of self-identification.
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Chitra Ganesh’s work is a massive mess, and I mean that in the best way possible. Her often immense sized work is a site of total contradiction and incongruous symbolism and reference that somehow comes together to create an angst-ridden work of cathartic self-expression. The reason that all of these complex and loaded images and ideas work together is because, in the end, Ganesh’s work is about herself and the many different influences on the sub-conscious of an Indian-American woman are here on full display.
Ganesh is a woman lying in between two worlds, East and West, and through these surrealist and often aggressive artworks she pours a multitude of the multifarious myths and themes inherit in these different cultures. As she explores complex themes like power and female sexuality, she uses the human body and often her own identity, as the battleground where these different cultures meet, clash and join together. Ganesh’s work is deeply personal, but it reflects a much greater struggle of cultural understanding and differences. The mixing of symbols and myths from Hindi, Greek and many other cultures each present a different understanding of cultural ideals and her work serves as both a glorification of these ideals as well as a sobering display of their differences.
Edward Said discussed in his book Orientalism the contrived misrepresentations the West has of the “Orient” and argues that it is these views that allow and justify the West’s attitude, treatment and dismissal of the “Orient.” The West, Said argues, has maintained a romanticized idea of the East, held over from colonialism, which views the “colonized” as backward uncivilized. However, Said emphasizes “that neither the term Orient nor the concept of the West has any ontological stability; each is made up of human effort, partly affirmation, partly identification of the Other.” The attempt to define or label an entire culture is a fruitless endeavor, based on sever misunderstandings and perhaps a lack of interest in understanding. This merely serves as a vehicle for more “powerful” and “civilized” nations to dismiss what they view as uncultured peoples and directly effects their treatment of said peoples.
Chitra Ganesh’s work is brazenly aware of these ideas and the Western view and “understanding” of the East. Her work goes about to shatter these imaginary boundaries that have been formed over centuries of interactions and imperialism. She dissects the different cultures that she herself has been surrounded with her entire life and on a gargantuan scale shows the viewer how they contrast, intersect and relate. The result is often violent, but then again so is the tumultuous relationship between these two worlds. Despite this, Ganesh succeeds in blurring the lines between our preconceived notions of other cultures and forcing us to reexamine what we know about our own ideals and those of other nations.
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Chitra Ganesh’s work is a massive mess, and I mean that in the best way possible. Her often immense sized work is a site of total contradiction and incongruous symbolism and reference that somehow comes together to create an angst-ridden work of cathartic self-expression. The reason that all of these complex and loaded images and ideas work together is because, in the end, Ganesh’s work is about herself and the many different influences on the sub-conscious of an Indian-American woman are here on full display.
Ganesh is a woman lying in between two worlds, East and West, and through these surrealist and often aggressive artworks she pours a multitude of the multifarious myths and themes inherit in these different cultures. As she explores complex themes like power and female sexuality, she uses the human body and often her own identity, as the battleground where these different cultures meet, clash and join together. Ganesh’s work is deeply personal, but it reflects a much greater struggle of cultural understanding and differences. The mixing of symbols and myths from Hindi, Greek and many other cultures each present a different understanding of cultural ideals and her work serves as both a glorification of these ideals as well as a sobering display of their differences.
Edward Said discussed in his book Orientalism the contrived misrepresentations the West has of the “Orient” and argues that it is these views that allow and justify the West’s attitude, treatment and dismissal of the “Orient.” The West, Said argues, has maintained a romanticized idea of the East, held over from colonialism, which views the “colonized” as backward uncivilized. However, Said emphasizes “that neither the term Orient nor the concept of the West has any ontological stability; each is made up of human effort, partly affirmation, partly identification of the Other.” The attempt to define or label an entire culture is a fruitless endeavor, based on sever misunderstandings and perhaps a lack of interest in understanding. This merely serves as a vehicle for more “powerful” and “civilized” nations to dismiss what they view as uncultured peoples and directly effects their treatment of said peoples.
Chitra Ganesh’s work is brazenly aware of these ideas and the Western view and “understanding” of the East. Her work goes about to shatter these imaginary boundaries that have been formed over centuries of interactions and imperialism. She dissects the different cultures that she herself has been surrounded with her entire life and on a gargantuan scale shows the viewer how they contrast, intersect and relate. The result is often violent, but then again so is the tumultuous relationship between these two worlds. Despite this, Ganesh succeeds in blurring the lines between our preconceived notions of other cultures and forcing us to reexamine what we know about our own ideals and those of other nations.
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Chitra Ganesh’s work distills universal ideas of cultural perception and narrative into works that facilitate dialogue with the viewer. Her work maintains a certain ambiguity, though the images found throughout her work are garnered from disparate media sources such as magazines, comics, and advertising that are ubiquitous in Southeast Asia. There is space for the viewer to re-imagine and interpret, just as Ganesh recycles and gives new context to Bollywood imagery and the myriad materials in her drawings and installations. Her work is quintessentially post-modern in the sense that it raises questions of identity within the context of a pluralistic, increasingly multicultural society.
Essential to a discussion of Chitra’s work are components of Edward Said’s writings. Chitra’s specific use of Southeast Asian mythology and advertising imagery implicitly acknowledges the colonial history of India, which bears a quite visible link to Said’s writings on post-colonialism. Ganesh states that she does not engage with these ideas as necessarily political, historical constructs. In her own words, the artist affirms, “While the project creates space for narratives excluded from visual regimes maintained by National Geographic magazines or Hindi films, my intention is not ‘substituting a 'correct' ethnic image for an 'incorrect' one.” Said, however, affirms that the West, the aforementioned National Geographic-stock photo version of history, is suspect because it is the tale of the victor that fetishizes the exotic cultures it conquers. This stance, despite her statements otherwise, is inherently and essentially political. Disenfranchised narratives are discarded from official history for reasons involving power, control, and the primacy of certain cultural or intellectual groups; the simple act of unearthing and display empowers the previously unknown, both creating an alternate narrative and challenging the pre-established.
Ganesh’s tendency to depict marginalized, subversive characters or stories symmetrically alludes to the emancipation and subsequent development of colonized nations around the globe. As a Westerner approaching her work, I cannot help but see these parallels, which she cannot help but acknowledge. Anthropological concerns and language are inextricably tied to the investigation of Eastern cultures from a Western perspective. Additionally, as a viewer without the personal context of Indian mythology, I do inherently view her choice of imagery as “Indian.” Ganesh maintains that to her personally, and to the Indian market for her work, these ideas of ‘culture’ and perception of imagery need not be labeled or acknowledged as such; they just are, because those viewers are familiar and comfortable with the permutations of icons her work so heavily involves. During her lecture, I wanted to ask her whether images or ideas about Sita of the Ramayana, and her gruesome trial by fire at the tale’s end, ever make their way into her work: Sita is the martyred female, a victim of sexist suspicion and violence related to both Hinduism and Islam. I abandoned my question when she vehemently affirmed her desire for her imagery to resist the label of “Indian,” but the residual lingers, and I don’t think it is possible for me, or for others coming from the same vantage as me, to comprehend her work in the ways she would like.
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What I really enjoyed about Chitra’s work was the honest relationship to drawing and source material that she had. She acknowledged that her art making practice begins with production and subsequently develops conceptually from there. I have a nagging suspicion that more artists are concerned with process than most conversations about artists’ work let on. Yes, her work is rich with cultural iconography, psychological content, literary allusion, and other kinds of symbolism, but it is first and foremost visually engaging. It seems to me that Chitra allows herself to produce work that is genuinely very personal. I believe—based on looking on her drawings, prints, and wall installations—that she is primarily and genuinely concerned with expressing her own point of view and openly presenting it to a public.
By contrast, I’m under the impression that one is encouraged to present work first and then adopt that presentation as personal. That is to say much work I’ve seen seems to come from impersonal platforms rather than individuals. Artists can forgo a degree of accountability by placing conceptual distance between their work and their personality. What is real psychological content and what is manifest artistic persona are quite distinct. Drawing from experience and emotion, working based on intuition (emotional intelligence) seems to me to create more resonant work than drawing from direct, logical, concept-driven work, which is only about testing viewer’s ability to understand the most convoluted rebus imaginable. Take, for example, the work of George Condo. Condo’s work amounts to a series of calculations using established artistic techniques and styles as figures. (What do you get when you add Yosemite Sam, Velasquez, and conspicuous consumption?)
Such process discloses the toxic brand of cynicism and nihilism that, im my opinion, serves best as a model of how not to make art. While I don’t want to be accused of merely bashing the postmodern relativism that allows such art (because, honestly, I think it’s a good thing), I do want to make clear that I’m happy to see emerging artists adopting a different paradigm. Like I said before, her work’s is filled with enough content to keep the most jaded postmodernist happily picking out signs for hours, but also emotive enough for just about anyone to understand. I’ve heard it said that the best work functions on multiple levels, and I’m under the impression that her work proves that statement. It is engaging because of its complexity, because of its narrative (though it is nonlinear), because of its calculated line quality and coloration, because of its unsentimental nostalgia.
A reduction of the work to a commentary on Orientalism does not stand; it doesn’t seem to be about east vs. west, or about injecting eastern voices into western culture. It’s about language, narrative, and general experience through one person’s eyes. That person happens to be Indian and the work is influenced by certain experiences and exposure that comes from being raised in that cultural environment. The work is not defined by this influence, no matter how prominently it features within. As she said herself, in India or Asia, the images are images. Her artworks are just artworks, not cultural artifacts to be deconstructed.
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I thought it was interesting when Chitra brought up the discrepancy between her successes in Asia versus her success in the United States. She claimed to believe that her work would never be as popular here as it is abroad because Americans will too often misunderstand it as being strictly “an Indian thing.” I think this notion has a lot to do with Edward Said’s views famously expressed in his book Orientalism. But whereas Said believes that western attitudes toward the east contained Eurocentric prejudice with political intellectualism bent on self-affirmation rather than objective study, western misunderstanding of Ganesh’s work is probably more Eurocentric predisposition with an apathetic desire to learn about cultures other than one’s own. Specifically Chitra spoke about her piece Sugar and Milk (2008). She believed American’s would only view it in terms of Indian mythology with ideas specific to Indian culture, but in reality the piece is about “nostalgia” and longing. When I look at the piece, with a three-armed mythical Indian goddess I am overwhelmed with the feeling that there is something happening in the piece that is completely foreign to me. But Ganesh’s iconography makes this very immediate reading of the piece difficult to avoid. Ganesh is Indian, and she grew up reading Hindi comics which clearly influences her aesthetic today. I am a white upper-middle class male, I grew up watching television that was often centered around a white middle to upper-middle class male. This iconography is present in my work, and while some may initially read my work as being concerned specifically with popular culture of the white male, it has more to do with my own search of a male role-model in my life. Art is a mode of self-expression, and we often cannot help but use imagery that is very particular to our own experiences. When Chitra makes works like Sugar and Milk as well as How I Found Her (2001) I believe she is expressing these experiences in very different ways. One way she shows a very literal event in a blunt way devoid of any cultural iconography or implications, in another way she is expressing the emotions and sentiments that culminated from such life experiences and events. I admire this variety of expression and I feel that it is something I can learn from and need to work on achieving in my own practice.
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Chitra Ganesh’s work emerges from a wide variety of references including, according to the artist, “Hindu iconography, Greek and Buddhist mythology, 19th century European portraiture and fairytales, song lyrics, as well as contemporary visual culture such as Bollywood posters, anime, and comic books.” As a result, the works often raise questions about the messages delivered in the source materials, especially in relation to the woman and their positions in different aspects of society.
Edward Said’s interview in “Panic at the Visual” discusses similar themes in his work, navigating between art and politics, emerging from the appropriation and combination of visual cultures found in the artists development as a child, engrained in pop culture. Edward Said works, being from Palestine, brought him to be a very powerful voice in postcolonial thought, being responsible for the idea of orientalism, or the idea of the Western study of Eastern culture, being inherently linked in the history of imperialism.
In Chitra’s “Digital Collages,” which are inspired by Indian comic books that are widely read and tell children their role within society, religiously, sexually, and otherwise, the artist alters the text and images to change their message. In Chitra’s artist statement, she states a desire to alter these texts, in order to eliminate the “prescriptive” nature of the comics. She does not impose a ‘correct’ message either, but rather, one that tends to raise questions.
Chitra’s larger installation pieces, that feature very large walls with mixed media, she seems to continue this thought and conceptual process through a more abstract method. In an artist statement referencing her painting, Chitra says, “By highlighting the violence and performative artifice inherent in popular representations of gender and class, the works explore problematics of representation in the post-colonial era. These contradictions emerge in the paintings, where women are figured as both perpetrators and victims of violence; as simultaneously compliant and subversive.”
Chitra’s work is conceptually postcolonial, examining a dialogue between Western and Eastern influences, as seen through her examination of the Bollywood system and Indian cultural representations in publications such as National Geographic. It is effective in raising questions by asking questions, not only in direct relationship with the subject such as Indian comics, but also through questioning the essence of how images are constructed and their relation to these images. Chitra’s apparent move away from traditional painting in her more recent works seems to echo this goal of questioning the composition of an image both physically and aesthetically.
Other than her concept, the pure volume of Chitra’s work serves as a display of her commitment and authenticity to her work and the subjects that it questions. Her transformation between wall painting, animation, and her earlier canvas painting work show how she is able to continue to evolve and apply a signature aesthetic to a continuously changing body of work.
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Edward Said, authority on Postcolonial thought and Orientalism, in his interview W. T. J. Mitchell, very plainly states that which attracts him to the visual arts: “something…absolutely essential”—a lasting affect that is at the very basis of art making. In his interview, he does not seek to challenge the interviewer and reader; he does not draw false (if however original) conclusions or connections about the range of works that interest him. He freely speaks about the allure of certain paintings, photographs, and even eras of art making.
Chitra Ganesh addresses her work in a very similar manner. Without getting to the heart of weighty cultural issues in her work, Chitra speaks to thematic content (a melting pot of religions, mythologies, cultural influences, and images), materials, and the allure of basic visual forms (e.g. comics). Listening to her speak about her work was truly enjoyable as she puts what she thinks is important on the table (what she likes about this or that, why she made things this way, how she achieved that scale, who bought this work…) and leaves the controversial commentary up to the viewer (and, inevitably, the critic). Unafraid to say, “I am dealing with issues of identity and culture,” Chitra lets her work exist on a level of pure essentiality, an act that I would assume Said to admire. She lets the viewer create his or her own relationship to the world.
Her work serves its purpose of “social responsibility,” as Carol Becker would contend. Chitra seems to reject the vow of silence, or path of least resistance, presented in Becker’s essay. Chitra employs modes of mass-image production (eg. Comic books, or billboard-sized installations), to assault the timidly opinionated American viewer. Multi-legged blue Hindu goddesses (with female genitalia carved into their arms and blood dripping from their fangs) walk the fine line of profane and desirable. Chitra challenges our accepted schemas for (cartoonish) visual content and glaringly presents us with issues many Americans are (at least somewhat) hesitant to discuss, all the while asking us to develop a relationship with the work.
In addition, she addresses that her work is received differently around the world. She works with a global lens and serves the intellectual cravings of the international individual. She defines the sort of responsibility Becker calls for, and extends it to every realm she can reach: a social act that affects different societies. She is a “responsible” member of society.
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A reoccurring theme in Chitra Ganesh’s work both stated by her in the lecture and on her website is the buried narrative and figures that are marginalized in official historical documents. She wants draw attention to that which goes unnoticed and in doing so she is politically charging her work with the question “who writes history?” More often than not the answer is the victor. Ganesh gives a voice to the “loser” the ones who do not have influence on the writing of history and whose significance is lost or made minimal.
Like Edward Said, her narrative acts as “a function of speaking from a place,” in other words narrative as space and in his case as well hers narrative as inaccessible space. Said wanted to illuminate inaccessible spaces, and Ganesh illuminates inaccessible narratives. Said cast light upon the inaccessible spaces of his culture and Ganesh upon inaccessible figures in history that are merely inaccessible because of their marginalization.
Another interesting comparison that arose between Said and Ganesh was a shared interest in the distorted body. Said was interested in the body concealing and at the same time making more visible the process of decomposition or distortion through disease. And Ganesh was interested in the body as a symbol of sexuality, desire, and social issues. The body for Ganesh acts as a multilayered entity that through her dismembering shows that which is hidden. This is mirrored in Said’s interest in the body that conceals decomposition and ultimately death.
Said mentions his influences and ultimately how these influences affect his opinions and writing. Ganesh lists many of her influences and discussed her influences in the lecture as well. But what I enjoyed about Ganesh’s influences was their eclectic nature. Like many people of the 21st century, she is exposed to global cultural influences and she is educated and has knowledge on various subject matter, allowing her work to bring together history, literature, and pop culture. Both Said and Ganesh’s influences show the global interconnectedness of society today and broad spectrum from which artists, writers, and intellectuals can pull from for their work.
Furthermore, Ganesh is able to utilize aesthetics to create a balance between art and the political that Becker, Rosler, and Said have said to be critical in art’s importance. Her work makes the viewer aware of the problems of objectivity in history as her focus on buried narratives sheds light on the skewed perspective of history. Rosler discuses the difficulties that faced her as her desire to create political work lead to indifference from the art world, but because Ganesh balances the political making its presence evident but subtle her works are better received, due to the viewer’s immediate response to their aesthetic beauty. Ultimately, Ganesh’s is successful in conveying the political with art. Her work is aesthetically pleasing and contemporary and raises political questions. Her works carry and combine her own interests in comics, her Indian culture, in myth, and in folklore with the theme of buried narratives and marginalized figures in history.
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I really enjoyed having Chitra Ganesh speak with us and share some of her own work. It was very helpful to be able to talk with a young artist who is creating and exhibiting work successfully. I also found that I was very drawn to her work, both in her exploration of materials and subject matter. It was very impressive that she has been able to work at such a large scale, installing pieces over twenty feet high, but I was most interested in her painting and works on paper. Her references to traditional European portrait painting combined with elements of Indian culture and contemporary debates on feminine sexuality were particularly moving. One of my favorite pieces was the work titled “Salome,” which incorporates this style of working.
Ganesh’s drawings, both the ones that she presented during class as well as many others on her website, were the most exciting for me. Her clever and often disturbing use of Indian culture alongside contemporary drawing techniques and subject matter created dreamlike, eerie illustrations. She mentioned one of her main influences is the comic industry, both Indian and Western, a reference which seems clear in her drawings, especially the ones created on the computer. These digital collages seemed a bit too slick to me; I preferred her hand-drawn work, which incorporated an extraordinary array of non-traditional materials that brightened the work and gave it a great deal of texture.
After reading a few of the statements regarding her work (on her website), I was also intrigued by her interest in different methods of storytelling and different interpretations of one story. Certainly her work employs a kind of narrative, if occasionally broken, that corresponds to the Indian comics she read as a child, including Amar Chitra Katha. Ganesh also cites popular folklore and European fairy tales, like Grimm’s, as inspiration for these works. Common themes that unite the two, despite their cultural differences, are the battle between good and evil, and, in her words, “prescriptive models of citizenship, nationalism, religious expression, public behavior, and sexuality.” She expresses that rather than prescribe a model, or give a clear answer to these questions, she wants to simply open these questions up to interpretation in her work, so that they become blurred and there is no singular meaning.
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I was very taken with several concepts expressed in Chitra Ganesh’s work. When she first began her presentation, I noticed the specific form of subjective narration that she used--a format characteristic of mass mediated graphic imagery. Her work actually reminded me not only of the dark feminist portrayals in Watchmen, which inspires her, but also of the intimacy of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis. Her drawing work focuses on the line quality appropriated from graphic novels and comics, and she uses this medium to depict grotesque bodily imagery. I admired her use of subjective narration within these pieces, and her implementation of text and story as well as images of the body. She creates a critical glimpse into the character of the heroic female, and further questions the meaning of heroicism. She introduces a non-Western, female persona as the main character, drastically different from the typical portrayals of female figures in comics as static and overly sexual. Even Roy Lichtenstein’s cartoon reappropriation pieces reside within the boundaries of female stereotype, whereas Ganesh’s pieces lend her characters agency and power.
Ganesh makes use of the unexpected narrator, as well as the surreal and sexual. In this way, her work reminds me of Kara Walker’s images. Walker’s silhouettes lend an ambiguous quality to many scenes of miscegenation, violence, and sex. However, her work often asserts agency on the part of the black female, as she blends fact and fiction to re-imagine historical circumstances. Her female characters, such as the Negress, embody grotesque and exaggerated acts. Similarly, Ganesh’s characters portray images of the surreal and uncomfortable. In fact, her drawings and paintings often contain elements of Surrealist imagery, echoing the exquisite painting style of artists such as Frida Kahlo. Just as Kahlo’s paintings evoke pain and feminist imagery, so do those of Ganesh. Ganesh further complicates these images by combining text as well as collaged materials.
Ganesh’s work uses many symbols of the grotesque, the bodily, and the exaggerated female form. With her use of sculpture and organic shape, her work often parallels artists such as Judy Chicago and Louise Bourgeois. The biologically human, yet narrative qualities of her work allow Ganesh to comment on the stereotypes and often violent images associated with femininity. Her work has a certain ugliness, a certain peculiarity about it that draws an audience in, while keeping them entranced by its fantastic and dreamlike qualities.
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I was a great opportunity to meet and listen to an artist so unique as Chitra Ganesh. The style that she uses in her characters and also the versatility in her techniques were incredibly captivating. I always thought that an expression of sexuality and certain feminist values could never be portrayed to subtly and with stylistic evasion. Her characters, especially her hand drawn ones are more gothic than female sexuality. But somehow, Chitra's themes show through. In one of the readings that we did there was a reading that discussed an artist that portrayed the roles of females in uncommon settings through the art of collage. Chitra, I think, sometimes uses her background as Hindu to also create a platform in which she can express her views on sexuality and the "female". Also, as Chitra uses the collision of different histories and culture to show action and direction of her pieces.
Something interesting that she also mentioned was the fact that sometimes her work is seen as portraying a specific culture, one of India, just because the characters' skins or clothing. However, it was important to note that the only reason that it was like that was because of her familiarity with her own culture which give her a more comfortable background to portray. This issue is similar to the theory of post-colonialism, which Edward Said supported, in the fact that people that are foreigners to a colonized country feel like they understand the culture and what the people are like in that specific country, when in truth they never looked past they effect of their existence on a particular country. "Westerners" dont really understand and try to put things neatly into a labled box. All in all, Chitra's work was more compelling than I expected and the fact that she continues to expand her knowledge and progress in her work is something inspiring.
On Friday, February 2011, Artist Chitra Ganesh visited the AAPNYC Seminar Class to discuss her work and career. Below are some reviews of her art work. You can see and read more about Chitra Ganesh's work here, http://www.chitraganesh.com/
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Chitra Ganesh’s art work raises issues of identity and social roles within the realm of art historical positioning. Ganesh’s work challenges the viewer to reassess their concept of high art and their knowledge of western art history. Though deeply rooted in classic art historical references, Ganesh’s work pushes beyond the canon and calls attention to the experience of the marginalized.
Through the incredibly complex use of visual signifiers, Ganesh is capable of deconstructing and reimagining forms that are typically meant for children. Bright colors, floral patterns and the use of glitter attract the unsuspecting viewer. Yet, upon closer inspection, Ganesh’s work reveals meanings deeply grounded in the world of adults. By occasionally working in a comic book medium, Ganesh is exploiting the low brow while simultaneously making her art accessible. This idea is reminiscent of Rosler’s discussion of the art world as a mirror in her essay, “Place, Position, Power, Politics”. On page 58 of the article Rosler suggests that art be a mirror through which society is distorted and reflected. This fragmented and altered reflection has the familiarity of reality yet with the heightened truth that is only revealed through seeing beyond the real.
Additionally, Ganesh’s work also thrives on the “gaps” in society. She believes that gaps are fertile locations for determining “what could be”. The idea of expansion and exploring beyond what is commonly understood or accepted is central to Ganesh’s work. Such gaps are also utilized as a means of expressing her inspiration. Hindu and Buddhist mythology, science fiction and religious iconography all play a key role in her multi-media endeavors. By creating
with the “discarded” moment in mind, she exploits the idea of the “ethnic specimen” in her works, but most clearly in photographs. The “Hidden Trails” series is derived from National Geographic images she was exposed to as a child. The photos from the series fetishize the “other” through the gaze of the western man. This idea mirrors Edward Saïd’s discussion of orientalism and colonialism. In many ways Ganesh’s art serves as a visual representation of the imbalanced critique between East and West.
When discussing her work, Ganesh mentioned that she often considers the visual frame of her audience when deciding which images to create and how to hang her work. By creating in the monumental scale, Ganesh asks her viewer to get lost in her imagery and to take account of how the experience changes their view of the world around them. The act of getting lost is a pervasive theme in Chitra Ganesh’s art. While some artists dwell in the absence of boundaries, Ganesh uses that space as a means of self-identification.
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Chitra Ganesh’s work is a massive mess, and I mean that in the best way possible. Her often immense sized work is a site of total contradiction and incongruous symbolism and reference that somehow comes together to create an angst-ridden work of cathartic self-expression. The reason that all of these complex and loaded images and ideas work together is because, in the end, Ganesh’s work is about herself and the many different influences on the sub-conscious of an Indian-American woman are here on full display.
Ganesh is a woman lying in between two worlds, East and West, and through these surrealist and often aggressive artworks she pours a multitude of the multifarious myths and themes inherit in these different cultures. As she explores complex themes like power and female sexuality, she uses the human body and often her own identity, as the battleground where these different cultures meet, clash and join together. Ganesh’s work is deeply personal, but it reflects a much greater struggle of cultural understanding and differences. The mixing of symbols and myths from Hindi, Greek and many other cultures each present a different understanding of cultural ideals and her work serves as both a glorification of these ideals as well as a sobering display of their differences.
Edward Said discussed in his book Orientalism the contrived misrepresentations the West has of the “Orient” and argues that it is these views that allow and justify the West’s attitude, treatment and dismissal of the “Orient.” The West, Said argues, has maintained a romanticized idea of the East, held over from colonialism, which views the “colonized” as backward uncivilized. However, Said emphasizes “that neither the term Orient nor the concept of the West has any ontological stability; each is made up of human effort, partly affirmation, partly identification of the Other.” The attempt to define or label an entire culture is a fruitless endeavor, based on sever misunderstandings and perhaps a lack of interest in understanding. This merely serves as a vehicle for more “powerful” and “civilized” nations to dismiss what they view as uncultured peoples and directly effects their treatment of said peoples.
Chitra Ganesh’s work is brazenly aware of these ideas and the Western view and “understanding” of the East. Her work goes about to shatter these imaginary boundaries that have been formed over centuries of interactions and imperialism. She dissects the different cultures that she herself has been surrounded with her entire life and on a gargantuan scale shows the viewer how they contrast, intersect and relate. The result is often violent, but then again so is the tumultuous relationship between these two worlds. Despite this, Ganesh succeeds in blurring the lines between our preconceived notions of other cultures and forcing us to reexamine what we know about our own ideals and those of other nations.
***
Chitra Ganesh’s work is a massive mess, and I mean that in the best way possible. Her often immense sized work is a site of total contradiction and incongruous symbolism and reference that somehow comes together to create an angst-ridden work of cathartic self-expression. The reason that all of these complex and loaded images and ideas work together is because, in the end, Ganesh’s work is about herself and the many different influences on the sub-conscious of an Indian-American woman are here on full display.
Ganesh is a woman lying in between two worlds, East and West, and through these surrealist and often aggressive artworks she pours a multitude of the multifarious myths and themes inherit in these different cultures. As she explores complex themes like power and female sexuality, she uses the human body and often her own identity, as the battleground where these different cultures meet, clash and join together. Ganesh’s work is deeply personal, but it reflects a much greater struggle of cultural understanding and differences. The mixing of symbols and myths from Hindi, Greek and many other cultures each present a different understanding of cultural ideals and her work serves as both a glorification of these ideals as well as a sobering display of their differences.
Edward Said discussed in his book Orientalism the contrived misrepresentations the West has of the “Orient” and argues that it is these views that allow and justify the West’s attitude, treatment and dismissal of the “Orient.” The West, Said argues, has maintained a romanticized idea of the East, held over from colonialism, which views the “colonized” as backward uncivilized. However, Said emphasizes “that neither the term Orient nor the concept of the West has any ontological stability; each is made up of human effort, partly affirmation, partly identification of the Other.” The attempt to define or label an entire culture is a fruitless endeavor, based on sever misunderstandings and perhaps a lack of interest in understanding. This merely serves as a vehicle for more “powerful” and “civilized” nations to dismiss what they view as uncultured peoples and directly effects their treatment of said peoples.
Chitra Ganesh’s work is brazenly aware of these ideas and the Western view and “understanding” of the East. Her work goes about to shatter these imaginary boundaries that have been formed over centuries of interactions and imperialism. She dissects the different cultures that she herself has been surrounded with her entire life and on a gargantuan scale shows the viewer how they contrast, intersect and relate. The result is often violent, but then again so is the tumultuous relationship between these two worlds. Despite this, Ganesh succeeds in blurring the lines between our preconceived notions of other cultures and forcing us to reexamine what we know about our own ideals and those of other nations.
***
Chitra Ganesh’s work distills universal ideas of cultural perception and narrative into works that facilitate dialogue with the viewer. Her work maintains a certain ambiguity, though the images found throughout her work are garnered from disparate media sources such as magazines, comics, and advertising that are ubiquitous in Southeast Asia. There is space for the viewer to re-imagine and interpret, just as Ganesh recycles and gives new context to Bollywood imagery and the myriad materials in her drawings and installations. Her work is quintessentially post-modern in the sense that it raises questions of identity within the context of a pluralistic, increasingly multicultural society.
Essential to a discussion of Chitra’s work are components of Edward Said’s writings. Chitra’s specific use of Southeast Asian mythology and advertising imagery implicitly acknowledges the colonial history of India, which bears a quite visible link to Said’s writings on post-colonialism. Ganesh states that she does not engage with these ideas as necessarily political, historical constructs. In her own words, the artist affirms, “While the project creates space for narratives excluded from visual regimes maintained by National Geographic magazines or Hindi films, my intention is not ‘substituting a 'correct' ethnic image for an 'incorrect' one.” Said, however, affirms that the West, the aforementioned National Geographic-stock photo version of history, is suspect because it is the tale of the victor that fetishizes the exotic cultures it conquers. This stance, despite her statements otherwise, is inherently and essentially political. Disenfranchised narratives are discarded from official history for reasons involving power, control, and the primacy of certain cultural or intellectual groups; the simple act of unearthing and display empowers the previously unknown, both creating an alternate narrative and challenging the pre-established.
Ganesh’s tendency to depict marginalized, subversive characters or stories symmetrically alludes to the emancipation and subsequent development of colonized nations around the globe. As a Westerner approaching her work, I cannot help but see these parallels, which she cannot help but acknowledge. Anthropological concerns and language are inextricably tied to the investigation of Eastern cultures from a Western perspective. Additionally, as a viewer without the personal context of Indian mythology, I do inherently view her choice of imagery as “Indian.” Ganesh maintains that to her personally, and to the Indian market for her work, these ideas of ‘culture’ and perception of imagery need not be labeled or acknowledged as such; they just are, because those viewers are familiar and comfortable with the permutations of icons her work so heavily involves. During her lecture, I wanted to ask her whether images or ideas about Sita of the Ramayana, and her gruesome trial by fire at the tale’s end, ever make their way into her work: Sita is the martyred female, a victim of sexist suspicion and violence related to both Hinduism and Islam. I abandoned my question when she vehemently affirmed her desire for her imagery to resist the label of “Indian,” but the residual lingers, and I don’t think it is possible for me, or for others coming from the same vantage as me, to comprehend her work in the ways she would like.
***
What I really enjoyed about Chitra’s work was the honest relationship to drawing and source material that she had. She acknowledged that her art making practice begins with production and subsequently develops conceptually from there. I have a nagging suspicion that more artists are concerned with process than most conversations about artists’ work let on. Yes, her work is rich with cultural iconography, psychological content, literary allusion, and other kinds of symbolism, but it is first and foremost visually engaging. It seems to me that Chitra allows herself to produce work that is genuinely very personal. I believe—based on looking on her drawings, prints, and wall installations—that she is primarily and genuinely concerned with expressing her own point of view and openly presenting it to a public.
By contrast, I’m under the impression that one is encouraged to present work first and then adopt that presentation as personal. That is to say much work I’ve seen seems to come from impersonal platforms rather than individuals. Artists can forgo a degree of accountability by placing conceptual distance between their work and their personality. What is real psychological content and what is manifest artistic persona are quite distinct. Drawing from experience and emotion, working based on intuition (emotional intelligence) seems to me to create more resonant work than drawing from direct, logical, concept-driven work, which is only about testing viewer’s ability to understand the most convoluted rebus imaginable. Take, for example, the work of George Condo. Condo’s work amounts to a series of calculations using established artistic techniques and styles as figures. (What do you get when you add Yosemite Sam, Velasquez, and conspicuous consumption?)
Such process discloses the toxic brand of cynicism and nihilism that, im my opinion, serves best as a model of how not to make art. While I don’t want to be accused of merely bashing the postmodern relativism that allows such art (because, honestly, I think it’s a good thing), I do want to make clear that I’m happy to see emerging artists adopting a different paradigm. Like I said before, her work’s is filled with enough content to keep the most jaded postmodernist happily picking out signs for hours, but also emotive enough for just about anyone to understand. I’ve heard it said that the best work functions on multiple levels, and I’m under the impression that her work proves that statement. It is engaging because of its complexity, because of its narrative (though it is nonlinear), because of its calculated line quality and coloration, because of its unsentimental nostalgia.
A reduction of the work to a commentary on Orientalism does not stand; it doesn’t seem to be about east vs. west, or about injecting eastern voices into western culture. It’s about language, narrative, and general experience through one person’s eyes. That person happens to be Indian and the work is influenced by certain experiences and exposure that comes from being raised in that cultural environment. The work is not defined by this influence, no matter how prominently it features within. As she said herself, in India or Asia, the images are images. Her artworks are just artworks, not cultural artifacts to be deconstructed.
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I thought it was interesting when Chitra brought up the discrepancy between her successes in Asia versus her success in the United States. She claimed to believe that her work would never be as popular here as it is abroad because Americans will too often misunderstand it as being strictly “an Indian thing.” I think this notion has a lot to do with Edward Said’s views famously expressed in his book Orientalism. But whereas Said believes that western attitudes toward the east contained Eurocentric prejudice with political intellectualism bent on self-affirmation rather than objective study, western misunderstanding of Ganesh’s work is probably more Eurocentric predisposition with an apathetic desire to learn about cultures other than one’s own. Specifically Chitra spoke about her piece Sugar and Milk (2008). She believed American’s would only view it in terms of Indian mythology with ideas specific to Indian culture, but in reality the piece is about “nostalgia” and longing. When I look at the piece, with a three-armed mythical Indian goddess I am overwhelmed with the feeling that there is something happening in the piece that is completely foreign to me. But Ganesh’s iconography makes this very immediate reading of the piece difficult to avoid. Ganesh is Indian, and she grew up reading Hindi comics which clearly influences her aesthetic today. I am a white upper-middle class male, I grew up watching television that was often centered around a white middle to upper-middle class male. This iconography is present in my work, and while some may initially read my work as being concerned specifically with popular culture of the white male, it has more to do with my own search of a male role-model in my life. Art is a mode of self-expression, and we often cannot help but use imagery that is very particular to our own experiences. When Chitra makes works like Sugar and Milk as well as How I Found Her (2001) I believe she is expressing these experiences in very different ways. One way she shows a very literal event in a blunt way devoid of any cultural iconography or implications, in another way she is expressing the emotions and sentiments that culminated from such life experiences and events. I admire this variety of expression and I feel that it is something I can learn from and need to work on achieving in my own practice.
***
Chitra Ganesh’s work emerges from a wide variety of references including, according to the artist, “Hindu iconography, Greek and Buddhist mythology, 19th century European portraiture and fairytales, song lyrics, as well as contemporary visual culture such as Bollywood posters, anime, and comic books.” As a result, the works often raise questions about the messages delivered in the source materials, especially in relation to the woman and their positions in different aspects of society.
Edward Said’s interview in “Panic at the Visual” discusses similar themes in his work, navigating between art and politics, emerging from the appropriation and combination of visual cultures found in the artists development as a child, engrained in pop culture. Edward Said works, being from Palestine, brought him to be a very powerful voice in postcolonial thought, being responsible for the idea of orientalism, or the idea of the Western study of Eastern culture, being inherently linked in the history of imperialism.
In Chitra’s “Digital Collages,” which are inspired by Indian comic books that are widely read and tell children their role within society, religiously, sexually, and otherwise, the artist alters the text and images to change their message. In Chitra’s artist statement, she states a desire to alter these texts, in order to eliminate the “prescriptive” nature of the comics. She does not impose a ‘correct’ message either, but rather, one that tends to raise questions.
Chitra’s larger installation pieces, that feature very large walls with mixed media, she seems to continue this thought and conceptual process through a more abstract method. In an artist statement referencing her painting, Chitra says, “By highlighting the violence and performative artifice inherent in popular representations of gender and class, the works explore problematics of representation in the post-colonial era. These contradictions emerge in the paintings, where women are figured as both perpetrators and victims of violence; as simultaneously compliant and subversive.”
Chitra’s work is conceptually postcolonial, examining a dialogue between Western and Eastern influences, as seen through her examination of the Bollywood system and Indian cultural representations in publications such as National Geographic. It is effective in raising questions by asking questions, not only in direct relationship with the subject such as Indian comics, but also through questioning the essence of how images are constructed and their relation to these images. Chitra’s apparent move away from traditional painting in her more recent works seems to echo this goal of questioning the composition of an image both physically and aesthetically.
Other than her concept, the pure volume of Chitra’s work serves as a display of her commitment and authenticity to her work and the subjects that it questions. Her transformation between wall painting, animation, and her earlier canvas painting work show how she is able to continue to evolve and apply a signature aesthetic to a continuously changing body of work.
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Edward Said, authority on Postcolonial thought and Orientalism, in his interview W. T. J. Mitchell, very plainly states that which attracts him to the visual arts: “something…absolutely essential”—a lasting affect that is at the very basis of art making. In his interview, he does not seek to challenge the interviewer and reader; he does not draw false (if however original) conclusions or connections about the range of works that interest him. He freely speaks about the allure of certain paintings, photographs, and even eras of art making.
Chitra Ganesh addresses her work in a very similar manner. Without getting to the heart of weighty cultural issues in her work, Chitra speaks to thematic content (a melting pot of religions, mythologies, cultural influences, and images), materials, and the allure of basic visual forms (e.g. comics). Listening to her speak about her work was truly enjoyable as she puts what she thinks is important on the table (what she likes about this or that, why she made things this way, how she achieved that scale, who bought this work…) and leaves the controversial commentary up to the viewer (and, inevitably, the critic). Unafraid to say, “I am dealing with issues of identity and culture,” Chitra lets her work exist on a level of pure essentiality, an act that I would assume Said to admire. She lets the viewer create his or her own relationship to the world.
Her work serves its purpose of “social responsibility,” as Carol Becker would contend. Chitra seems to reject the vow of silence, or path of least resistance, presented in Becker’s essay. Chitra employs modes of mass-image production (eg. Comic books, or billboard-sized installations), to assault the timidly opinionated American viewer. Multi-legged blue Hindu goddesses (with female genitalia carved into their arms and blood dripping from their fangs) walk the fine line of profane and desirable. Chitra challenges our accepted schemas for (cartoonish) visual content and glaringly presents us with issues many Americans are (at least somewhat) hesitant to discuss, all the while asking us to develop a relationship with the work.
In addition, she addresses that her work is received differently around the world. She works with a global lens and serves the intellectual cravings of the international individual. She defines the sort of responsibility Becker calls for, and extends it to every realm she can reach: a social act that affects different societies. She is a “responsible” member of society.
***
A reoccurring theme in Chitra Ganesh’s work both stated by her in the lecture and on her website is the buried narrative and figures that are marginalized in official historical documents. She wants draw attention to that which goes unnoticed and in doing so she is politically charging her work with the question “who writes history?” More often than not the answer is the victor. Ganesh gives a voice to the “loser” the ones who do not have influence on the writing of history and whose significance is lost or made minimal.
Like Edward Said, her narrative acts as “a function of speaking from a place,” in other words narrative as space and in his case as well hers narrative as inaccessible space. Said wanted to illuminate inaccessible spaces, and Ganesh illuminates inaccessible narratives. Said cast light upon the inaccessible spaces of his culture and Ganesh upon inaccessible figures in history that are merely inaccessible because of their marginalization.
Another interesting comparison that arose between Said and Ganesh was a shared interest in the distorted body. Said was interested in the body concealing and at the same time making more visible the process of decomposition or distortion through disease. And Ganesh was interested in the body as a symbol of sexuality, desire, and social issues. The body for Ganesh acts as a multilayered entity that through her dismembering shows that which is hidden. This is mirrored in Said’s interest in the body that conceals decomposition and ultimately death.
Said mentions his influences and ultimately how these influences affect his opinions and writing. Ganesh lists many of her influences and discussed her influences in the lecture as well. But what I enjoyed about Ganesh’s influences was their eclectic nature. Like many people of the 21st century, she is exposed to global cultural influences and she is educated and has knowledge on various subject matter, allowing her work to bring together history, literature, and pop culture. Both Said and Ganesh’s influences show the global interconnectedness of society today and broad spectrum from which artists, writers, and intellectuals can pull from for their work.
Furthermore, Ganesh is able to utilize aesthetics to create a balance between art and the political that Becker, Rosler, and Said have said to be critical in art’s importance. Her work makes the viewer aware of the problems of objectivity in history as her focus on buried narratives sheds light on the skewed perspective of history. Rosler discuses the difficulties that faced her as her desire to create political work lead to indifference from the art world, but because Ganesh balances the political making its presence evident but subtle her works are better received, due to the viewer’s immediate response to their aesthetic beauty. Ultimately, Ganesh’s is successful in conveying the political with art. Her work is aesthetically pleasing and contemporary and raises political questions. Her works carry and combine her own interests in comics, her Indian culture, in myth, and in folklore with the theme of buried narratives and marginalized figures in history.
***
I really enjoyed having Chitra Ganesh speak with us and share some of her own work. It was very helpful to be able to talk with a young artist who is creating and exhibiting work successfully. I also found that I was very drawn to her work, both in her exploration of materials and subject matter. It was very impressive that she has been able to work at such a large scale, installing pieces over twenty feet high, but I was most interested in her painting and works on paper. Her references to traditional European portrait painting combined with elements of Indian culture and contemporary debates on feminine sexuality were particularly moving. One of my favorite pieces was the work titled “Salome,” which incorporates this style of working.
Ganesh’s drawings, both the ones that she presented during class as well as many others on her website, were the most exciting for me. Her clever and often disturbing use of Indian culture alongside contemporary drawing techniques and subject matter created dreamlike, eerie illustrations. She mentioned one of her main influences is the comic industry, both Indian and Western, a reference which seems clear in her drawings, especially the ones created on the computer. These digital collages seemed a bit too slick to me; I preferred her hand-drawn work, which incorporated an extraordinary array of non-traditional materials that brightened the work and gave it a great deal of texture.
After reading a few of the statements regarding her work (on her website), I was also intrigued by her interest in different methods of storytelling and different interpretations of one story. Certainly her work employs a kind of narrative, if occasionally broken, that corresponds to the Indian comics she read as a child, including Amar Chitra Katha. Ganesh also cites popular folklore and European fairy tales, like Grimm’s, as inspiration for these works. Common themes that unite the two, despite their cultural differences, are the battle between good and evil, and, in her words, “prescriptive models of citizenship, nationalism, religious expression, public behavior, and sexuality.” She expresses that rather than prescribe a model, or give a clear answer to these questions, she wants to simply open these questions up to interpretation in her work, so that they become blurred and there is no singular meaning.
***
I was very taken with several concepts expressed in Chitra Ganesh’s work. When she first began her presentation, I noticed the specific form of subjective narration that she used--a format characteristic of mass mediated graphic imagery. Her work actually reminded me not only of the dark feminist portrayals in Watchmen, which inspires her, but also of the intimacy of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis. Her drawing work focuses on the line quality appropriated from graphic novels and comics, and she uses this medium to depict grotesque bodily imagery. I admired her use of subjective narration within these pieces, and her implementation of text and story as well as images of the body. She creates a critical glimpse into the character of the heroic female, and further questions the meaning of heroicism. She introduces a non-Western, female persona as the main character, drastically different from the typical portrayals of female figures in comics as static and overly sexual. Even Roy Lichtenstein’s cartoon reappropriation pieces reside within the boundaries of female stereotype, whereas Ganesh’s pieces lend her characters agency and power.
Ganesh makes use of the unexpected narrator, as well as the surreal and sexual. In this way, her work reminds me of Kara Walker’s images. Walker’s silhouettes lend an ambiguous quality to many scenes of miscegenation, violence, and sex. However, her work often asserts agency on the part of the black female, as she blends fact and fiction to re-imagine historical circumstances. Her female characters, such as the Negress, embody grotesque and exaggerated acts. Similarly, Ganesh’s characters portray images of the surreal and uncomfortable. In fact, her drawings and paintings often contain elements of Surrealist imagery, echoing the exquisite painting style of artists such as Frida Kahlo. Just as Kahlo’s paintings evoke pain and feminist imagery, so do those of Ganesh. Ganesh further complicates these images by combining text as well as collaged materials.
Ganesh’s work uses many symbols of the grotesque, the bodily, and the exaggerated female form. With her use of sculpture and organic shape, her work often parallels artists such as Judy Chicago and Louise Bourgeois. The biologically human, yet narrative qualities of her work allow Ganesh to comment on the stereotypes and often violent images associated with femininity. Her work has a certain ugliness, a certain peculiarity about it that draws an audience in, while keeping them entranced by its fantastic and dreamlike qualities.
***
I was a great opportunity to meet and listen to an artist so unique as Chitra Ganesh. The style that she uses in her characters and also the versatility in her techniques were incredibly captivating. I always thought that an expression of sexuality and certain feminist values could never be portrayed to subtly and with stylistic evasion. Her characters, especially her hand drawn ones are more gothic than female sexuality. But somehow, Chitra's themes show through. In one of the readings that we did there was a reading that discussed an artist that portrayed the roles of females in uncommon settings through the art of collage. Chitra, I think, sometimes uses her background as Hindu to also create a platform in which she can express her views on sexuality and the "female". Also, as Chitra uses the collision of different histories and culture to show action and direction of her pieces.
Something interesting that she also mentioned was the fact that sometimes her work is seen as portraying a specific culture, one of India, just because the characters' skins or clothing. However, it was important to note that the only reason that it was like that was because of her familiarity with her own culture which give her a more comfortable background to portray. This issue is similar to the theory of post-colonialism, which Edward Said supported, in the fact that people that are foreigners to a colonized country feel like they understand the culture and what the people are like in that specific country, when in truth they never looked past they effect of their existence on a particular country. "Westerners" dont really understand and try to put things neatly into a labled box. All in all, Chitra's work was more compelling than I expected and the fact that she continues to expand her knowledge and progress in her work is something inspiring.
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