Chitra Ganesh | Resplendent: Identity and Visibility in Comics | Montserrat College of Art

Hales is delighted to announce the inclusion of Chitra Ganesh in Resplendent: Identity and Visibility in Comics at Montserrat College of Art, through 19 November 2022. 

 

Resplendent: Identity & Visibility in Comics features the work of comic and visual artists who rewrite and reimagine how gender and identity can be represented in contemporary comics. Mainstream comics have long been dominated by white, largely male superheroes and villains. This exhibition highlights the growing body of positive, powerful, and diverse depictions of LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC+ characters and story worlds. It features regional and national practitioners who bring fresh voices and new perspectives to their medium. 

 

Comics offer a powerful platform for LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC+ artists to envision themselves. Drawing conceptual and visual connections to acts of line-making, the exhibition explores the medium of comics as a means to delineate new spaces of belonging. Lines are elemental to the act of drawing and a defining visual feature of many comic forms. Actual and symbolic lines are also drawn, crossed, and joined together, presenting opportunities for self-assertion and self-identification. Such ideas are present in the writings of the cultural theorist, Sara Ahmed, who proposes that lines both divide things and construct spaces that we imagine we can be in.