Chitra Ganesh: On Dreaming and Refusal
Smithsonian American Art Museum virtual program, with Chitra Ganesh in conversation with curator Saisha Grayson about her collaborative video "My Dreams, My Works Must Wait Till After Hell" (7:14 mins., 2011), made with Simone Leigh. Set to a haunting score of Japanese flutes and drums, viewers observe the unclothed back of a Black woman. Turned away, the woman’s body represents both vulnerability and a declaration of strength and refusal to be available to desiring or oppressive eyes. Ganesh discusses how this work asserts and protects the right to the complex, concealed inner lives for women of color and constitutes a queer, feminist response to centuries of the female nude depicted in Western art history.