On Saturday, September 9, 2023, Gallery Wendi Norris and NYRB Poets celebrated the opening of Alice Rahon and Ranu Mukherjee: Time Warriors. Renowned scholar Mary Ann Caws begins the program with a reading from Shapeshifter, her recent translation of Alice Rahon's poetry. A conversation between Brooklyn-based gallery artist Chitra Ganesh and San Francisco-based gallery artist Ranu Mukherjee then follows.
Although her paintings have received international acclaim, Rahon’s written work has gone largely undiscovered. Published by NYRB Poets, Shapeshifter, features Rahon’s poems in their original French alongside their English translations by Mary Ann Caws.
Both Mukherjee and Ganesh’s artistic practices draw from life forms and their keen interest in creolization. For this program, Ganesh interviews Mukherjee about her new paintings and discusses how presenting them alongside Rahon’s work inspires new interpretations of both artists’ practices, particularly in relation to feminism and time.
About the Speakers
Mary Ann Caws holds a Doctor of Humane Letters, is an Officer in the Palmes Académiques, a Chevalier in the Ordre des Arts et Lettres, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the author of many volumes and anthologies on literature and art. She is Distinguished Professor Emerita of English, French, and Comparative Literature at the Graduate School of the City University of New York.
Chitra Ganesh’s (b. 1975, Brooklyn) visual vocabulary draws from broad-ranging material and historic reference points, including surrealism, expressionism, Hindu, Greek and Buddhist iconographies, South Asian pictorial traditions, 19th-century European portraiture and fairy tales, comic books, song lyrics, science fiction, Bollywood posters, news and media images.
Ranu Mukherjee (b. 1966, Boston) makes hybrid work in painting, moving image and installation. Her work is marked by a deliberate use of saturated color, the collision of tempos, and sensual materiality. The numerous and often imperceptible layers she employs evoke questions of visibility, legibility and abstraction.
