Chitra Ganesh: Tiger in the Looking Glass, The Brooklyn Rail, October 2024
Installation View, Chitra Ganesh: Tiger in the Looking Glass at Gallery Wendi Norris, 2024. Courtesy Gallery Wendi Norris. Photo by Scott Saraceno
By Danica Sachs
A hybrid beast, a woman with a cat-like tail and tiger’s head, clad in a magenta jumpsuit, is poised on all fours in the middle of Chitra Ganesh’s large painting, Enter the Jungle (all works 2024). Enclosed in a shimmery orb, the tiger confronts the viewer, mouth open, mid-roar. Surrounded by lush tropical flora rendered in Ganesh’s botanic palette of shades of green, pink, and violet, the scene resembles the exotic jungle paintings of Henri Rousseau but with an uneasy undercurrent. Ganesh includes a single eye peering voyeuristically between the foliage behind this fantastic creature, while a pair of hands holds the orb up in the center of the image, presenting the tiger/woman as an object of curiosity. On the wall directly across from the entrance of the gallery and as the largest work on view; this painting sets the tone for Ganesh’s current exhibition, Tiger in the Looking Glass, on view at Wendi Norris. With 2024 marking the centennial of André Breton’s Manifesto of Surrealism, which called for liberation of the imagination in pursuit of a radically new worldview, these timely paintings show Ganesh deftly engaging Surrealist imaging strategies, locating femme hybrid figures and animals in fanciful setting.