'Devika Rani (2012) is a striking charcoal work with a spectral beauty evoking the long-lost world of silent movies. Ganesh’s body of charcoal drawings evolved from a practice which is unified by a keen interest in exploring intersections of mythic narratives, bodily excess, science fiction, and iconic representations of femininity.

Devika Rani was an iconic figure in Indo-German silent films of the 1930s and 1940s. This towering portrait celebrates her power and influence in this space, a rarity for female actors at the time. The drawing emphasizes Ganesh's interest in exploring stories and icons of femininity or sexuality that remain at the edges of canonical understandings of history, literature and art.

Building on a decades-long career interested in Hindu mythology and supernatural depictions of feminine power, Ganesh notes, "I was haunted by the frequency of bodily transformations inherent in early cinema's depictions of femininity — with characters moving freely between corporeal matter, spirit, animal and automaton. These moments provided me with links across history and time to the kinds of iconographies I have been interested in developing and giving voice to in my drawing-based practice across media."