Essay #1

Chitra Ganesh’s current exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum includes a majestic, site-specific mural called Eyes of Time. It features a massive, six-armed woman in the middle who is supposed to represent the Goddess Kali (the goddess of change, time, and destruction in Hindu and Buddhist mythology) who is reaching out/connected to two other woman figures who lack a body. All three figures are supposed to be “iterations of one another” in addition to being “iterations of feminine power,” says Ganesh in a video about her installation. I am choosing to focus on the figure that is on the right of the large woman, who is supposed to be a “futuristic rendering…of feminine spirit or power,” the artist describes. The figure, as are other parts of the mural, is three-dimensional. One of the materials that can be clearly identified are gold metal gears of different sizes, which are supposed to be parts of the woman’s face and neck and parts of her hair. Two other materials that are discernible are a few wires hanging from the wall and what seems to be the inside of a speaker. Other materials are not as easily identifiable, like pearl-colored, teeth-like things outlining the upper part of her hair and some red and silver metal bits next to her ear. There are blue and purple lines outlining the side-view features of the woman’s face. Wavy hair strands of the same color can be seen starting from her forehead and stop where mechanical-like shapes are drawn/painted. There are also a series of spiral-y lines originating from the figure’s mouth that connects her to Kali. The texture of the metal gears are probably glossy, the iridescent teeth-like things seem chalk-y, and the metal bits smooth also. The positive space would have to be the figure’s hair and the 3D materials that make it up and the outline of the figure’s face, while the negative space is the yellow wall that the mural is on. This figure is both representational and abstract. It is representational in that the woman figure is idealized to be a woman with hair and soft facial features. Though, it is also abstract since there’s no such thing as “mechanistic.”

           Another exhibition that is currently at the Brooklyn Museum is artist Kehinde Wiley’s New Republic. From Wiley’s exhibition, I want to focus on one titled, Femme piquée par un serpent. It is a two-dimensional, oil on canvas painting featuring a bronze/black colored man lying partly on his side and his upper back looking out onto the viewer. He is wearing white sneakers with gold trimming and white soles, wrinkled dark blue jeans, a white belt, an exposed white pair of briefs, a green hoodie on top of a dark orange shirt and a dark orange fitted cap turned sideways. He is lying on a wooden surface covered in white, wrinkled linen.  Moreover, white and orange flowers and leaves are scattered randomly against a deep blue background. Some of the flowers and leaves are also scattered among the foreground of the painting – one landing on the man’s jeans, another on the sleeve of his sweater, and the rest fall on the linen. Evidence of implied light can be seen on the man’s jeans, sweater, face, a bit of exposed back, and his hands. This painting is absolutely a realistic representation.

            Chitra Ganesh and Kehinde Wiley’s artworks are both immensely moving. Chitra Ganesh’s mechanical portrayal of a woman speaks to her theme of the “cyclical relationship of time.” I understand what she tries to convey in a video about this exhibition that things, which she once perceived as science fiction when she was growing up, have become today’s reality. I especially like her emphasis on the woman’s hair since hair is one of the explicit ways that society assumes one’s gender.

Kehinde Wiley’s exhibition is refreshing in that it explores the intersectionality of race, gender, and power. Femme piquée par un serpent is supposed to be referring to an 1847 sculpture of “a woman dying from a poisonous snakebite” and was “highly praised for its sensual naturalism.” By replacing the (probably) white woman with a black man, it is Wiley’s way of asking, “What now? Does it still count as art? Do you still think it’s so great?”