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पौर्णिमा: Gazing Into The Full Moon Night by Roshan Ganu
Opening Reception: Saturday, October 15th, 7-10 PM
Exhibition Runs: October 16 – November 13, 2022
Artist Talk: November 2nd at 6 PM
Join us on Wednesday, November 2nd, at 6 pm for a conversation with our current exhibiting artist Roshan Ganu and curator Erin Gleeson. Ganu and Gleeson will discuss processes and concepts explored within “पौर्णिमा: Gazing Into The Full Moon Night”. More on Erin Gleeson is below.
Gallery Hours:
Wednesday - Friday 11-6PM
Saturday & Sunday 11-5PM
“पौर्णिमा: Gazing Into The Full Moon Night” by Roshan Ganu is an ephemeral creation that emerges when light and darkness layer together; this is the place where Ganu tells her story. Her story unfolds in a multi-media installation, an experiential and conceptual exploration of space, delving into the complexities of the modern human condition. Ganu uses personal experiences of isolation to create a space of empathy and transformation. Her storytelling uses a multi-lingual framework of Marathi, English, and Visual to immerse us in the consciousness found at the core of languages. “पौर्णिमा: Gazing Into The Full Moon Night” embraces Ganu’s multilingual upbringing; each language applies its layer of perception. Marathi is Ganu’s native language; her schooling was in English; the state language of her hometown Goa is Konkani. Indian films and TV influenced her Hindi; she speaks Portuguese due to Goa’s colonial past and holds a Masters's in French linguistics and translation, while Minneapolis influenced her usage of Visual Language.
Ganu uses iterations of light and darkness through projections and video to observe the flow of meaning within a multi-lingual framework. A shifting space emerges when water and illumination are combined, a scenic-experiential knowledge she possesses due to her Goan upbringing along the west coast of India. Isolation weaves into every facet of the immigrant experience amplified by the pandemic; Ganu meets her audiences in this space of vulnerability and imagination, inviting everyone into her cinematic stories. The materials she selects hold an emotional purpose: neon and mirrors create a dream space with an atmosphere of the trickster; water and reflection are meditative, hypnotic, and destructive; handmade paper maché sculptures foster nostalgia, vulnerability, and the fragility of memory. All these become textural assemblages of Ganu’s personal space, presenting herself as a multifaceted woman of Goan origins, claiming only the existence of the day-to-day and turning the lens toward herself as an invitation to real life.
Ganu grew up listening to stories from Hindu mythological epics as bedtime stories, during dinner, or on festival days, from her Grandma and mom, and fabricated new stories from Marathi literature with her mother, a professor of the language. The vivid, non-linear nature of these mythological narratives and multi-directional notions of time and space within these stories grounds her understanding of mundane surroundings while simultaneously empowering her to expose the fantastical and otherworldly that can also reside within the ordinary. This unusual visual balance also finds inspiration in her childhood, employing the visual effects of famous Pan-Indian TV serials portraying the Hindu mythological epics, Mahabharata and Ramayan, combined with the immediacy that modern technological tools can provide. It is a new type of non-linear storytelling, in collaboration with technology, that can transform anything into the fantastical in the blink of an eye.
Roshan Ganu is a multimedia narrative artist presently based in Minneapolis and originally from the coastal state of Goa in India. Collectively her art practice brings a narrative, a moment, or an emotion to life wherein she employs the tools of linguistics and history to meet her audience in the space of vulnerability and reflection. ‘Isolation’ is the predominant framework through which she perceives the human condition while exploring its impact on our understanding of self and each other. Speaking from a ‘collage’ state of mind where reality-fiction, backstage-front stage, actors-audience, video and still imagery, night and day, you and I, and other such binaries blend to create an immersive, liminal space. Where she asks: Can a visual experience create its universal language and constructions of time?
Ganu has conceptualized stories for the Minneapolis Institute of Art and the Minnesota Opera. She is an awardee of the MiNiatures grant by MN Opera and has received the competitive Next Step Fund Grant in 2021 from the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council. Ganu recently concluded a 2021-22 artist residency at Second Shift Studio Space in St. Paul with previous exhibitions at the Duluth Art Institute, Second Shift, Artistry Bloomington, and ArtReach St.Croix, among others. She is presently Adjunct Faculty at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Her work has been recognized with interviews and articles from the Star Tribune, Post Bulletin, Brooklyn Rail, MinnPost, MPLSArt, and SOTA podcast.
Erin Gleeson is a curator and writer based in Minneapolis. Their recent and forthcoming projects include Eulogy, a performance lecture, The New School, NYC (2022); Comeback Kid, a solo by Nicholas Grafia, Silverlens, Manila (2022); and the multi-venue program Deathpower (2023-25). Past exhibitions, programs, and talks include Experimenta Curator's Hub, Kolkata; Artspeak, Vancouver; Jeu de Paume, Paris; House of World Cultures, Berlin; Asia Art Archive in America; MoMA, New York; Center for Contemporary Art, Singapore, among others. Her recently published writings relate to artistic and curatorial practices in Southeast Asia, including with NANG, Gwangju Biennale, Sternberg Press, and Urban Research (UR). Currently, Erin is a lecturer in the Critical Theory and Curatorial Studies Department of Art, University of Minnesota; an advisor at Rijksakademie, Amsterdam; and director of FD13, a residency program inviting artists to Mní Sóta Makhóčhe to develop new work and present it live, most recently with Kablusiak, Yee I-Lann, and Anocha Suwichakornpong. From 2011-2018, she was co-founding director and curator of SA SA BASSAC, a non-profit art center in Phnom Penh.
