October 18, 2020 - October 18, 2021
Chitra Ganesh: A city will share her secrets if you know how to ask
Leslie Lohman Museum of Art
26 Wooster Street
New York, NY 10013
Chitra Ganesh's iteration of QUEERPOWER, the Leslie Lohman Museum's annual site-specific public art installation, is now on view on the museum's facade.
A city will share her secrets if you know how to ask incorporates both historical and speculative imagery, celebrating the queer and transgender histories of downtown Manhattan and the neighborhoods adjacent to the museum's Soho location. Ganesh includes imagery from architectures of nineteenth century black settlements, Seneca Village and Little Africa, as well as seventeenth century Lenape structures that have since been destroyed. Ganesh weaves flora and fauna indigenous to New York throughout this sprawling street-facing artwork.
This new work extends Ganesh's ongoing commitment to femininity and social formations that are overlooked or excluded from mainstream discourses around queerness and race. Ganesh highlights the vibrant Asian and South Asian queer communities who have influenced her. The installation grounds the future in our present moment, with images of trans and gender-nonconforming people who have been murdered this year, as well as historic queer and trans activists, including those who were lost to COVID-19.
