Chitra Ganesh

Chitra Ganesh, Walking the Timeline, detail, 2022, acrylic on paper with cotton embroidery, glass, fabric, beetle wings, shells, vintage jewelry, 74 5/8 x 48 1/4 in (189.6 x 122.6 cm)

BIOGRAPHY

Chitra Ganesh’s (b. 1975, Brooklyn) visual vocabulary draws from broad-ranging material and historic reference points, including surrealism, expressionism, Hindu, Greek and Buddhist iconographies, South Asian pictorial traditions, 19th-century European portraiture and fairy tales, comic books, song lyrics, science fiction, Bollywood posters, news and media images. The process of automatic writing is central to her practice and emerges from dissecting myths to retrieve critical moments of abjection, desire, and loss. By layering disparate materials and visual languages, Ganesh considers alternate narratives of sexuality and power.

Ganesh's work has been widely exhibited in the United States and internationally. Recent solo exhibitions have been staged at the Brooklyn Museum, NY; MoMA PS1, NY; The Kitchen, NY; The Rubin Museum of Art, NY; The Andy Warhol Museum, PA; Gothenburg Kunsthalle, Sweden; Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco; and Times Square, NY. Her work has also been exhibited in group exhibitions across the United States, including at The Walker Art Center, MN; the Baltimore Museum of Art, MD; The Queens Museum of Art, NY; The Asia Society, NY; The Bronx Museum, NY, The Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX; the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, CA; the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, CA; and the Boca Raton Museum of Art, LA, among others. Ganesh’s work as also been widely exhibited across Europe and Asia, including at the Hayward Gallery, London, Saatchi Museum, London; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Italy; Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno, Italy; the ZKM Center for Art and Media, Germany; Göteborgs Konsthall, Germany; Arthotek Kunstverein, Göttingen, Germany; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai; the Gwangju Contemporary Arts Centre, Korea; the Prince of Wales Museum, Mumbai; Indira Ghandi National Centre for Arts, Devi Art Foundation; the Dhaka Art Summit, among others.

Ganesh is the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, including grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts, Printed Matter, and the Art Matters Foundation; the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in the Creative Arts; the Lower East Side Printshop Special Editions Residency, the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award for Painters and Sculptors, and is the 2017-2018 recipient of the distinguished Hodder Fellowship from the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University. Ganesh’s work is represented in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art; The Brooklyn Museum; The Art Institute of Chicago; The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts; The Ford Foundation; the Devi Art Foundation; Kiran Nadar Museum; the Saatchi Collection; Burger Collection; Deutsche Bank, among others. Her work has been featured in publications, including The New York Times, Artforum, Hyperallergic, ArtNews, ArtNet News, Vogue India, Elle India, Harper’s Bazaar India, San Francisco Chronicle, Art Asia Pacific, among others. Ganesh graduated from Brown University with a BA in Comparative Literature and Art-Semiotics; she earned her MFA from Columbia University. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Download Curriculum Vitae

Poetry Reading x Artist Talk
Chitra Ganesh: A City Will Share Her Secrets If You Know How to Ask
Chitra Ganesh Receives Anonymous Was a Woman Award
Chitra Ganesh at the Leslie Lohman Museum of Art
Brooklyn-based Chitra Ganesh to reimagine the 1905 Bengali sci-fi novel Sultana’s Dream in bustling Soho
CHITRA GANESH with Megan N. Liberty
Chitra Ganesh by Tausif Noor
The Exquisite Cruelty of Time
Leslie-Lohman Museum Selects Chitra Ganesh For Fourth QUEERPOWER Commission
On the value of process and what success actually means
Best of 2019: Our Top 15 Exhibitions Around the World
5 Artists Using Glitter to Create Dazzling and Complex Artworks
Pushing gender boundaries through art
What to See in New York Art Galleries This Week
THE SCORPION GESTURE/FACE OF THE FUTURE | CHITRA GANESH
Chitra Ganesh | Rubin Art Museum
NAVIGATING NEW YORK’S ART SCENE
5 Questions to Chitra Ganesh
Between You and Me: Chitra Ganesh & Sung Hwan Kim
A Prophetic Vision that Dares to Imagine Otherwise
5 South Asian artists who're tackling culture, politics, gender and nostalgia
Chitra Ganesh
Brooklyn Artist Chitra Ganesh Gives South Asian Women an Overdue Platform
A Feminist Artist's Postcolonial Animations
BEYOND TRANSNATIONALISM
Rubin Museum of Art in New York Appoints New Director,”
Signs of unrest: protest fantasies of Chitra Ganesh
Chitra Ganesh Responds
Drawing Inspiration: A Conversation With Visual Artist Chitra Ganesh
Innovative Multi-Medium Artist Chitra Ganesh Shares her Creative Passion
Interviews: Chitra Ganesh
Editor’s Picks, Chitra Ganesh: Eyes of Time
A Survey Of Queer Feminist Artists Who Are Challenging Today’s ‘Body Oppression'
‘Her Stories’ | ‘Fifteen Years of the South Asian Women’s Creative Collective’
"Sultana's Dream" by Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain

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