Past, present and future blend in vivid Chitra Ganesh show
Baltic's ascent to the Underworld
Baltic demonstrates its commitment to both the local and the exotic with its two big summer exhibitions.
Inevitably it was the former that got the lion’s share of attention over this month’s opening weekend.
Photographs by the late Tish Murtha (more feted now than in life) open a window on our past, showing our places and people – raggedy kids, a bustling street life, pubs and industrial strife.
Displayed alongside, as modern counterpoint, are images by contemporary North East photographer Kuba Ryniewicz (Newcastle by way of Poland).
Go up a floor, though, and you enter a compelling but less familiar world as envisaged by Chitra Ganesh, its highlight being a new animation called – somewhat ironically - Journey to the Great Below.
Being premiered here, it plays simultaneously on two screens, one rectangular and one circular, and was inspired, we are told, by The Descent of Inanna into the Underworld, written in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq and part of Iran) nearly 4,000 years ago and reckoned to be the world’s oldest recorded myth.
Inanna, Sumerian goddess of love, fecundity and war, also known as the Queen of Heaven, embarks on a dangerous journey to face her sister (and dark alter ego) Ereshkigal, Queen of the Underworld.
The poem describes Inanna’s confrontation with death and eventual return to the world of the living.
The vivid film, while channelling age-old mythology, has a 21st Century gaming vibe, blending ancient, modern and futuristic imagery that also seems to chime (hope this isn’t sacrilegious) with the current tattoo fad.
“Inanna’s tumultuous journey into the underworld resonates deeply with the current moment marked by political and ecological upheaval,” goes the Baltic blurb.
“Her shattered and renewed life is a potent metaphor for navigating our increasingly dark times with resilience and courage, offering a message of hope for our contemporary situation.”
It’s beautiful and cartoonish; able to be seen as both complex and profound, simplistic and naïve. Definitely worth watching, though.
No less striking than her exhibition was Chitra herself on the eve of opening, a colourful figure as the finishing touches were being applied to artworks laid out around her on Level 4.
Baltic are calling this her first major UK exhibition in a public institution, although she said she has previously figured in UK group shows and had a booth at the Frieze London art fair in 2019.
That was the same year Baltic curator Emma Dean encountered her work in an exhibition called An Opera for Animals, showing at the Para Site arts centre in Hong Kong.
She saw and was smitten.
“We planned to do a show and were talking about ideas for murals,” she recalled.
“And then,” said Chitra, “the pandemic happened.”
Emma: “But we kept in touch. I’m a huge fan of Chitra’s work so it was never going to go away for me. It was just about finding the right time to do it.”
That time is now and it has brought Chitra to the North East for the first time where, clearly, Baltic’s vast spaces held no fears for her.
Her exhibition has a dramatic entrance, inviting the visitor to pass through a sequence of decorated sculptural arches recalling the ziggurat structures of ancient Mesopotamia.
At the far end, unblinking, is a new sculpture called Cosmic Eye, inspired by an artefact in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Wide eyes in ancient Mesopotamian art, we learn, showed attentiveness and devotion to the gods.
Beyond that, should you be bold enough to take this route, lies an older but no less arresting sculptural piece, corralled in its own space.
This is Manuscript, from 2016, a magnificently magnified representation of the artist’s hand with its raw silk surface serving as a backdrop for animated drawings.
Yet another new sculpture, Descent, features disembodied feet, symbolising the goddess Inanna’s journey down to the land of the dead. Commissioned by Baltic, it made me smile in spite of its serious message of death, transformation and rebirth.
Chitra Ganesh was born in New York, where she still lives and works, in 1975.
Her parents had gone there from India and her father was a lucky winner in the green card lottery, formally the diversity immigrant visa programme which the current US administration, you won’t be surprised to learn, has put on hold.
Chitra returned to India frequently with her parents, she said, so absorbed imagery from various cultures from a young age.
Semiotics, the study of symbols, is a specialist subject. And she read a great deal.
“I would say classical mythology and classicism have been a longstanding inspiration for my work. Growing up, I read the Aeneid and the Odyssey, and I learned about Hindu mythology.
“Thinking about the connection between the deep past and where we’re heading brought me to this.
“Temples, caves, monuments, ruins, monumental statuary, ways in which ancient architecture is part of everyday contemporary public culture… it has all really unfurled in this body of work.”
Dipping into her own website biography, I find that across a 20-year art practice (perhaps longer now) Chitra “has developed an expansive body of work rooted in drawing and painting, which has evolved to encompass animations, wall drawings, collages, computer generated imagery, video and sculpture.
“Through a multidisciplinary approach, Ganesh ‘constantly attempts to challenge patriarchal norms and empower her female and queer subjects by constructing alternate visual narratives’.”
In her work as displayed on Baltic’s Level 4 you will see these ‘patriarchal norms’ challenged and agency given to those traditionally subjugated subjects.
There is a lot to take in – but even on a fleeting visit and merely skimming the surface you will be able to see and appreciate some beautiful drawing and exquisite pictures.
Maybe do that first and then return for the deep stuff on a later occasion. There is time.
Chitra Ganesh: Journey to the Great Below is at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, until January 17, 2027. Baltic opens Wednesday to Sunday.