Between, Beneath, and Beyond: A conversation with Chitra Ganesh & Jared Vadera for the South Asian American Digital Archive
Jaret Vadera: So where does your story begin? Do you remember what first drew you to art? To making things? Was there a moment when you first decided you wanted to be an artist?
Chitra Ganesh: My story begins in New York in the mid 1970s. My first memories are of Sheepshead Bay, and a blackout during the Summer of Sam, and of the Bengali immigrant families who helped take care of me. I lived in Hyderabad for a year with my Masi and Mama, a very significant year for me.
One of the summers I spent in India I recall sitting in a auto (rickshaw), watching a gargantuan Bollywood poster being made. I was fascinated watching the process of this huge poster coming to life, and the men who were painting it. I remember being visually oriented from a very young age. I was drawn to the handmade, to the materiality, and rawness, of the human hand that touched a surface to create a representation of something else.