Chitra Ganesh: Sci-Fi from the Seventies

Chitra Ganesh “lives and works in Brooklyn, is from New York, but is of Indian origin,” we learned from Sarah Burney of Gallery ESPACE, who gave us the rundown of the young artist as we stood before Ganesh’s collaged, cultural pastiches.

“In the seventies in India, they published a series of comics called the Amar Chitra Katha, which were supposed to teach Indian children—specifically those that were being raised abroad—about Hindu religion, mythology, and values,” Burney said. 

With the vintage books in mind, Ganesh created a series of comics of her own from which she prints enlarged, individual frames. Embellished with her signature combination of hand-drawn and computer renderings, the work transitions seamlessly between original content and thoughtful additions—like the star map she sourced from NASA and so-subtly slipped in as the night sky of Atlas (first image, at right).