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Knowing "The Unknowns": The Artwork of Chitra Ganesh

2011; Feminist Studies; Volume: 37; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/fem.2011.0001

2153-3873

Svati P. Shah,

Art, Politics, and Modernism

Art Essay Knowing "The Unknowns": The Artwork of Chitra Ganesh Svati P. Shah To the extent that [Walter] Benjamin is right, that "there is a history of perception that is ultimately the history of myth," it would not be inappropriate to regard these philosophical studies as critical illumi nations of that mythology—an ideological formation. . . . What the light of history shows, we have learned, it shows only with adumbra tions. There is no light without shadows, without darkness and con cealment. And in this acknowledgment, there is perhaps a lesson for history already inscribed in the field of our vision. —David Levin, Sites of Vision: The Discursive Constructionof Sight in the History of Philosophy Chitra Ganesh was born in Brooklyn, New York, where she currently lives and works. Her work has been exhibited internationally and has at tracted a following in Asia, Europe, and the United States. Over the past decade, she has become recognized as an artist whose work contributes much to the thinking on "feminist," "queer," and "South Asian" contem porary art. At the same time, Ganesh's work has also been recognized for elucidating the productive complexities of having an aesthetic, style, and subject matter that elude the national and conceptual boundaries that currently constitute the ways in which the art world frames and pro motes the work of emerging artists. In so doing, Ganesh's work troubles the art historical orthodoxies that demand categorizing contemporary art Feminist Studies37, no. 1 (Spring 2011). © 2011 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Ill 112 Svati P. Shah through easily bounded notions of "East" or "West," "feminist," "figura tive," "political," or "conceptual." In addition to all of these, Ganesh's work has also been described as mythic, postcolonial, and rebellious, as it brings together a diverse array of images and referents from Indian mythic poetry; the Progressive Artists' Group (one of the most influential groups of modern artists in India, formed in 1947 and active until 1956); comics and graphic novels from the United States, India, and Japan; Mexican muralism from the early-twentieth century; contemporary street art and graffiti; as well as phantasmagorical motifs from Egon Schiele, Hierony mus Bosch, and Albrecht Diirer and autobiographical meditations in the vein of Bhupen Khakar, Frieda Kahlo, and Ana Mendieta. Like many artists who have made work that sits outside of the main stream, Ganesh has also been described as "oppositional"—to colonialism, heteronormativity, and patriarchy, for example. Her work has, at times, seemed to serve as an example of art that attempts to rewrite marginalized subjects into the art historical canon or as an example of "substitution theory" in action, in which normatively raced and sexed characters are replaced by nonnormative ones. In this essay, I do not aim to dismiss an oppositional reading of Ganesh's work outright, as if oppositionality is somehow only reactionary or shortsighted. To be sure, the need to resist normative, hierarchical modes of aestheticism and representation (e.g., the pursuit of "pure" beauty and/or conceptual rigor through the removal of the figure, or rele gating certain tones and materials to the realm of the "decorative" and therefore "primitive")1 demands artwork that legibly opposes these hierar chies. Feminists, in particular, have demonstrated time and again that women require being written into the canons of art history and visual theory, even at the expense of reifying the structure that produces an invis ible or diminished Other in the firstplace. Using the rubric of oppositional ity for exploring Ganesh's work does recognize the gaps and absences in the canons of contemporary art with respect to both form and subjects. In Kobena Mercer's famous formulation of this dynamic with respect to Robert Mapplethorpe's nude photographs of black men in the 1970s and 1980s, Previouspage, Figure1 Untitled 40 x 80 inches,2009, mixedmedia oncanvas,including acrylic, glitter, paint, and tinsel andclay. Private collection. Above, Figure2 Untitled 40 x 80 inches,2009, mixedmedia oncanvas,including charcoal, styrofoam, andsand. Private Collection. Opposite page, Figure3 Untitled 40 x 80 inches,2009, mixedmedia oncanvas,including glitter, glass, and elasticchord. Private Collection. Above Werewolf 40 x 80 inches,2009, mixedmediaon canvas,including feathers, andhotpowder. Private collection. Oppositepage Harem 40 x 80 inches...