‘Sultana's Dream’ continues Ganesh's longterm engagement with printmaking within an interdisciplinary practice, often working in series to build speculative narratives rooted in myth, science fiction, and feminist futurism. ‘Sultana's Dream’...
‘Sultana's Dream’ continues Ganesh's longterm engagement with printmaking within an interdisciplinary practice, often working in series to build speculative narratives rooted in myth, science fiction, and feminist futurism. ‘Sultana's Dream’ is a series of twenty-seven linocut prints directly inspired by scenes from the 1905 short story of the same title, one of the earliest works of feminist science fiction literature by the Bengali writer and social reformer Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain.
Ganesh writes, "This series of prints draws on Hossain’s vibrant imagery, translating a story written in verse into a visual grammar that connects with problems that shape 21st century life: apocalyptic environmental disaster, the disturbing persistence of gender-based inequality, the power of the wealthy few against the economic struggles of the majority, and ongoing geopolitical conflicts that cause widespread death and suffering. Created in a form that is historically foundational to the idea of public discourse, this series of works comments through form and content on this fraught moment in world history, demonstrating the enduring relevance of feminist utopia imaginaries in offering an invaluable means of envisioning a more just world."
‘Sultana's Dream’ has been acquired by numerous museums and is now held in the collections of: Allentown Art Museum, PA; Buffalo AKG Art Museum, NY; Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati, OH; Davis Museum, Wellesley College, MA; Detroit Institute of Arts, MI; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, CA; Library of Congress, Washington, DC; Mandeville Gallery, Union College, NY; McEvoy Foundation for the Arts, CA; Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester, NY; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; Rhode Island School of Design Museum, RI; Samdani Art Foundation, Dhaka, BD; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; San Jose Museum of Art, CA; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; University of Michigan Museum of Art, MI; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY.
A Woman You Thought You Knew, Kadist, San Francisco, California, USA (2024) Inheritance: Selections from the Whitney's Collection, 1971-2022, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA (2024)
Chitra Ganesh: Architects of the Future, Clifford Gallery, Colgate University, New York, USA (2023)
Pop South Asia: Artistic Explorations in the Popular, Sharjah Art Foundation, Dubai, UAE (2022); Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi, India (2023) Chitra Ganesh: Sultana’s Dream, Lockhart Gallery, Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester, New York, USA (2022) Oh, Honey...A Queer Reading of the Collection, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MI, USA (2022) Sultana's Dream, Mandeville Gallery, Union College, New York, USA (2021) Seismic Movements, Dhaka Art Summit, Dhaka, Bangladesh (2020) Chitra Ganesh, Her garden, a mirror, The Kitchen, New York, USA (2018)