Chitra
Ganesh
Artist
EYES OF TIME is a drawing-based installation that also
incorporates sculpture into a mural. The main figure takes its inspiration from
a key Indian concept of divine feminine power, Shakti, of which the goddess
Kali is a fierce iteration. Kali embodies time and change in Hindu and Buddhist
writings such as the Vedas, Upanishads, and Devi Mahatmyam. According to these
scriptures, we’re living in KaliYug, or dark ages of strife and discord.
The mural’s
central figure, towering over the viewer at fifteen feet tall, wears a skirt of
human arms, in line with popular portrayals of Kali as a demon-slaying goddess.
The bodies in Eyes of Time literally pop off the wall, exceeding the limits of
the two-dimensional frame. I’ve been working with clocks over the past year and
a half, having sourced antique hardware and clock parts from local bazaars for
exhibitions last year in Delhi and Mumbai. For this installation, large brass
gears were fabricated in an allusion to the notion of mythic time as a circular
rather than linear force, which has been on my mind as a point of intersection
between contemporary sci-fi and traditional mythical narratives.
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| Chitra Ganesh, Artist |
As part of
the exhibition, I was given the opportunity to curate an arrangement of objects
from the museum’s permanent collection, both ancient and contemporary
representations of femininity, in order to shed light on the conceptual
context, in both historic and contemporary art, for my own work. I also
researched exhibition catalogues that addressed the concept of Shakti within
their theoretical and curatorial framings. I examined a broad range of
representations of Shakti and Kali, from kitschy fantasy art and
twenty-first-century cultural appropriations to ancient abstraction and bronze
statues dating as far back as the sixth century BCE. Eyes of Time picks up on a
number of the ideas and formal references running through these curated
objects, as I considered both visual and thematic resonance in my selection
process.
One example
is Eyes, 1996, a Louise Bourgeois drypoint print featuring a sea of endlessly
repeating eyes which articulate ideas of the body in light of fragmentation,
repetition, and iconicity. There’s also a 1971 psychedelic screenprint, Relate
to Your Heritage, by Barbara Jones-Hogu, who was a part of the collective
AfriCOBRA in the 1960s. I also included two figurines of ancient goddesses from
Egypt and India, one of which is Sehmet, the Egyptian goddess of fertility and
menstruation, and the other a seventeenth-century bronze statue of Kali. Some
objects I initially selected faced conservation issues, such as being hundreds
of years old or so fragile they could only be shown every few years at
most—issues that one doesn’t typically have to consider with contemporary
objects.
My first
zine, Tales of Amnesia, 2002–2007, is also displayed in a vitrine in this show.
The museum has made copies of it for visitors to peruse in order to
contextualize Eyes of Time with zines and comics that focus on the intersection
of ancient myth and popular science fiction, which is a critical aspect of my
practice. There will be some programming around the exhibition, and the
Brooklyn Museum will also be screening a few of the films I’ve made, such as
the collaboration I did with Simone Leigh as well as an animation. I’m also
hoping to have a dance party as one of my public events. Coincidentally, in the
’90s there was even a queer club in London called Club Kali.
— As told to
Courtney Yoshimura for Artforum.com
