MEET CHITRA GANESH

“[I AM INTERESTED IN] Challenging and transforming historically gate-keeping, Eurocentric, exclusive art world structures.”

Across a twenty-five year practice that spans South Asia, North America, and Europe, Chitra Ganesh has developed an expansive body of work rooted in drawing and painting, which has evolved to encompass animation, wall drawings, prints, collage, video, and sculpture. Ganesh’s oeuvre is informed by her studies in literature and semiotic theory, and rich histories of public art and graphic design in India. In detailed works, Ganesh combines a vast array of influences including South Asian iconography, science fiction and queer theory, drawing upon visual tropes of vintage comics, anime, and film posters. In nonlinear narratives and richly layered worlds, Ganesh subverts traditional storytelling to open up speculative narratives where queer and femme protagonists actively shape their futures. Her works propose alternative depictions of sexuality and power from popular stories and histories, highlighting the accounts of female protagonists, which have often been subsumed or marginalized by plot lines that reproduce the contours of majoritarian power.

Ganesh is the recipient of numerous awards, including from the Ford Foundation, Anonymous Was a Woman Award, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in the Creative Arts; the Joan Mitchell Award, Art Matters Foundation, the Hodder Fellowship at Princeton University, Pollock Krasner Foundation, and many others. Her work has been widely reviewed including in The New York Times, Art Forum, Art In America, Hyperallergic, the Art Newspaper, Flash Art, and Art Asia Pacific.

Ganesh’s work is represented in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, NY, USA; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA, USA; the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, USA; The Guggenheim, NY, USA; The Art Institute of Chicago, IL, USA; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; The Ford Foundation, NY, USA; University of Michigan Museum of Art, MI, USA; The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, PA, USA; the Devi Art Foundation, India; Kiran Nadar Museum, Delhi, India; the Ishara Foundation. Dubai, the Saatchi Collection, London, UK; the Tai Kwun Foundation, Hong Kong; Deutsche Bank, among others.

She is on the Board of Governors of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and recently joined the board of the Joan Mitchell Foundation. Ganesh holds a BA in Art-Semiotics and Comparative Literature from Brown University, and an MFA from Columbia University. She lives and works in Brooklyn. 

Learn more here.