Chitra Ganesh

In “Knowing ‘The Unknowns’: The Artwork of Chitra Ganesh,” Svati P. Shah encourages viewers to consider the formal elements of Ganesh’s work instead of simply viewing them as existing in opposition to the art history canon. Shah describes the origins of the subjects’ of The Unknowns as coming from the “margins of a mythic history” and Ganesh's ability to interrogate "the gaze" through this series.

Ganesh's series, The Unknowns—a series of mixed-media works on canvas—explore “the relationship between anonymity, mass-mediated images, and the monumental, in the construction of a feminine iconography.” The series brings to mind large subway advertisements and posters and utilize various techniques including painting, collage, and commercial printing processes.

Ganesh graduated from the prestigious Saint Ann's School, and magna cum laude from Brown University with a BA in Comparative Literature and Art-Semiotics. She attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2001 and received her MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University, New York in 2002. Ganesh's studies in literature, semiotics, and social theory paved a way for her to become steadily engaged with narrative and deconstruction that animates her work.

Until 1998, when her mother died, Chitra Ganesh was hesitant about becoming an artist. Having a profession as an artist was nearly non-existent in her community. Also, she thought becoming an artist was "an option for the wealthy folks or people from a family of artists." After graduating from Brown University, she decided to get a job teaching junior high school in Washington Heights and continued to work in education. However, when her mother died, her work and personal life changed dramatically. After the incident, she transitioned to teaching part-time and began painting in her apartment; she declared her career as an artist as she felt that life is indeed very short.

During her time at Brown University as an undergraduate student, she was passionate for semiotics, feminism, post-coloniality, poetry, and translation. At the time, she encountered artists like Jaishri Abichandani, DJ Rekha, and other women from the South Asian Women's Creative Collective (SAWCC), which is an organization for South Asians who were interested in the arts. The late 1990s was an essential timeline for her because she was influenced by the interactions with south Asian female artists and her involvement in a number of progressive communities.

Chitra Ganesh (born 1975) is a visual artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Ganesh's work across media includes: charcoal drawings, digital collages, films, web projects, photographs, and wall murals. Ganesh draws from mythology, literature, and popular culture to reveal feminist and queer narratives from the past and to imagine new visions of the future.