2026 Nelson Social Justice Fund Lecture Chitra Ganesh: Rainbow Bodies

Join us for a lecture and conversation with artist Chitra Ganesh, alongside Sayantan Mukhopadhyay, PhD, Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Portland Museum of Art (PMA).

Across a twenty-year practice, Chitra Ganesh has developed an expansive body of work rooted in drawing and painting, which has evolved to encompass animations, wall drawings, collages, computer generated imagery, video, and sculpture. Ganesh’s oeuvre is informed by her studies in literature and semiotic theory, and rich histories of public art and graphic design in India. In detailed works, Ganesh combines a vast array of influences including South Asian iconography, science fiction and queer theory, drawing upon visual tropes of vintage comics, anime, and film posters. In nonlinear narratives and richly layered worlds, Ganesh subverts traditional storytelling to open up speculative narratives where queer and femme protagonists actively shape their futures.

Ganesh’s work is represented in the collections of the Guggenheim Museum, NY, USA; Museum of Modern Art, NY, USA; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA, USA; the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, USA; The Brooklyn Museum, NY, USA; The Art Institute of Chicago, IL, USA; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; The Ford Foundation, NY, USA; University of Michigan Museum of Art, MI, USA; The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, PA, USA; the Devi Art Foundation, India; Kiran Nadar Museum, Delhi, India; the Saatchi Collection, London, UK; Burger Collection, Hong Kong; Gwangju Contemporary Art Museum, South Korea; Deutsche Bank, among others. Her animation Rainbow Body (2018) from The Scorpion Gesture series entered the collection of the Portland Museum of Art last year.

Chitra Ganesh (b. 1975 Brooklyn, New York, USA) received a BA in Art-Semiotics and Comparative Literature from Brown University, Providence, RI in 1996. She attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2001 and received her MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University, NY in 2002. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, USA.

This program is generously made possible by the Leonard and Merle Nelson Social Justice Fund at the Portland Museum of Art.

The purpose of the Leonard and Merle Nelson Social Justice Fund is to honor those artists whose commitment to social justice is manifested in their work and lives. The fund supports exhibitions, lectures, scholarships, programs, or acquisitions that directly or indirectly address the relationship between works of art and social justice.

Featured image credit:

Chitra Ganesh
United States, born 1975
Rainbow Body from the series The Scorpion Gesture, 2018
digital animation, single-channel video with color and sound, 2 minutes and 2 seconds,
Museum purchase with support from the General Acquisitions Fund, 2025.39