Artist Chitra Ganesh spoke at the Block Museum of Art on Wednesday about three pieces the museum acquired from her 2012 collection “She the Question.”
Those pieces now reside permanently in the Block’s collection. They were inspired by the Amar Chitra Katha comics from India.
These comics reflect traditional cultural values, which Ganesh attempts to subvert in her recreations. The inkjet works are top-down reconstructions of traditional Indian folklore that often frame women as dependent on a patriarchal social organization rather than “active agents in their own right,” said Ganesh.
“Growing up in New York and being part of a community of people that just immigrated… I noticed some really striking representation absences (in art),” Ganesh said. “And so my work was exploring a lot of different kinds of images, languages and archives I thought were absent from our historical and national discourse.”
One of the selected pieces, “She the Question, She the Garbage Picker,” is a critique of the Indian caste system in a dystopian, space-like setting. “She the Question, Patience” highlights self-sovereignty, depicting a mutilated body radiating fire. “She the Question, The History of Encounter” centers on a mirrored conversation between two women in a mythical forest village.
In the process of choosing works to add to the Block’s collection, curators and researchers crafted a shortlist of potential pieces that the museum’s 19 student associates narrowed down to Ganesh’s three works. Among other criteria, the associates considered budgetary constraints and alignment with a previously decided theme — this year, horror and dystopia.
While a depiction of a mutilated human body, for example, reflected horror tropes, the student associates ultimately moved beyond the confines of the theme. The associates mainly selected Ganesh’s work for its portrayal of contemporary social issues, according to Weinberg senior and student associate Ethan Bledsoe.
“It’s usually around 15 (associates who) come together every week to discuss and narrow down who we want to see and what kind of voices we want represented, and Chitra brought together a couple of our goals,” said Medill junior Ashley Kim, another associate. “We were interested in acquiring the work of a female artist and also that of an artist of color.”
Laura Brueck, director of the Kaplan Institute for the Humanities, moderated Wednesday’s discussion of the pieces.
Brueck also is co-leader for NU’s Race, Caste and Colorism Project, which aims to reframe discussions about caste and casteism in intellectual and institutional organizations.
She said Ganesh’s works integrate marginalized and “non-normative” perspectives into broader understandings of Indian and South Asian culture.
“Chitra’s work presents a really capacious way of thinking about the many possibilities of thinking about that identity along with others that involve feminist perspective, queer perspectives, et cetera,” Brueck said.
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