Lot 87: CHITRA GANESH

PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE DUTCH COLLECTION B.1975 SECRETS Signed and dated "Gade 92" Digital colour print laid on board Edition 5 of 5 (+1 AP) 122 by 114.2 cm. (48 by 45 in.) Executed in 2007

Zurich, Haas & Fischer, Chitra Ganesh, Project Space 1+2: Loukia Alavanou, 24 August - 20 October London, Saatchi Gallery, The Empire Strikes Back: Indian Art Today, 29 January - 8 May 2010 Pittsburgh, Andy Warhol Museum, Word of God(ess): Chitra Ganesh, July - September 2011 Gothenburg, Göteborgs Konsthall, Chitra Ganesh: She the Question, June - September 2012

Mark Holborn ed., The Empire Strikes Back: Indian Art Today, Jonathan Cape, London, 2009, illustrated p. 105

Thomas Erben Gallery, New York, 2007

Chitra Ganesh was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, where she currently lives and works. Her drawing, installation, text-based work, and collaborations delve into the buried narratives and marginalized figures typically excluded from official canons of history, literature, and art. Ganesh draws from a broad range of material, including the iconography of Hindu, 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. 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 in a world where untold stories keep rising to the surface. In this process the body becomes a site of transgression, both social and psychic, doubled, dismembered and continually exceeding its limits. (Chitra Ganesh, Artist Statement, http://www.chitraganesh.com/statement.html) “Comics play a pivotal role in Ganesh’s visual cosmos. Beside X-Men and Archie, Amar Chitra Katha belonged to her favorites when she was young. The series, today with a print run of more than 90 million copies, was initiated at the end of the 1960s to teach children in India and the Diaspora about Hindu myths and the history of the country-and, of course to propagate specific role models and patterns of conduct. Between 2002-2007, Ganesh used pictures of the ACK comics to create the 21-part work, Tales of Amnesia (2002/2007).” (A. Druck, ‘Chitra Ganesh: Subversive Myths,’ Deutsche Bank Magazine, 2010) Ganesh herself has stated in interviews, “Reading [Amar Chitra Katha] as an adult, I noticed that they reproduced a lot of traditional conservative cultural norms regarding gender, religion, family, race, caste and colour. I wanted to use the strength of this imagery, but subvert the original narrative where art is disseminated in this seemingly innocuous form to young children about patriarchy, state, or power.” (O. Sand, ‘Asian Art Profile: Chitra Ganesh,’ Asian Art, December 2007)