The 2024-2025 Block Museum Student Associate (BMSA) cohort is pleased to announce the acquisition of three works by Chitra Ganesh (b. 1975) from her series She the Question (2012).

The Student Associates select artwork for acquisition each academic year, allowing students to learn about how a university museum acquires work and engage firsthand in the process. Each year, their selection of an artist and work is guided by a new theme. This cycle’s theme was “horror and dystopia.”

“The theme of horror and dystopia provided an important entry point for the process, but as our conversations progressed throughout the year, our students’ ideas around this theme became more nuanced, expansive, and complex,” says Erin Northington, The Block’s Susan and Stephen Wilson Associate Director, Campus and Community Education and Engagement. “We wondered together — how might ideas of horror and dystopia help us to imagine new and more hopeful shared worlds and futures?”

Throughout the fall quarter, the Student Associates collaborated with Block curatorial interns and Associate Curator of Collections Essi Rönkkö to create a shortlist of artists whose work engaged with the theme. Student Associate Ethan Bledsoe (2026) emphasizes the uniquely collaborative space the BMSAs generated when debating an artist for acquisition. “The acquisition process has been really special for me,” he says. “Everyone has their own personal tastes when it comes to art, but having thoughtful and meaningful discussions about what it would mean to buy these artworks and bring them into The Block’s collection… it was really cool.” After thorough discussion, research, and presentations in the winter, the cohort voted Ganesh’s work to be the most compelling.

Watch Student Reflections on the Acquisition

Chitra Ganesh is a multidisciplinary artist primarily working in painting and drawing, although her work extends vastly to animation, wall drawing, video, sculpture, and digital art.  Ganesh holds a degree in Semiotics and Comparative Literature from Brown University, and her knowledge of mythologies and narrative traditions informs her artistic practice. Her richly detailed work combines influences from South Asian iconography, science fiction, feminist and queer literature and scholarship, vintage comics, anime, and posters.

Roy Zhu (2025) says that the BMSAs were particularly drawn to the interdisciplinary nature of Ganesh’s work. “I really think this artwork supports such a wide range of conversations,” Zhu remarks. “Ganesh’s work plays with the elements of the body and uses motifs of queerness and queer identity, and subverting classical or traditional misogynistic views of women in mythology.”

Once the BMSAs had selected Ganesh, the decision then turned to which of her works to acquire. They decided to pick from Ganesh’s 2012 She the Question series, originally drawn as a 24-page comic book and inspired by Amar Chitra Katha, a series of Indian children’s comic books. The Block will acquire three prints from this series: She the Question, Patience; She the Question, She the Garbage Picker; and She the Question, The History of Encounter. “The BMSAs were particularly drawn to She the Question for its engagement with mythology, the comic form, and its subversion of traditional narratives; as well as its reimagining of archetypes and collective memory,” the cohort writes.

Ashley Kim (2027) emphasized the uniqueness of Ganesh’s comic format. “For me, comic books are so nostalgic, and being able to see that in an institution like The Block is really inspiring, because I think it’s accessible in a way that art might not always be,” she notes.

As the final stage of their process, the Student Associates worked collaboratively to write an acquisition justification, a document incorporating curatorial research and detailing the reasons behind a purchase for museum records. In the following excerpts from their justification, the BMSAs share their interpretation of Ganesh’s works.

She the Question, She the Garbage Picker (2012), is a vibrant diptych composed of two panels, each illustrating a surreal futuristic landscape. It fuses speculative futurism with poetic allegory, evoking a dreamlike visual suspended between themes of cosmic longing and terrestrial struggle. In the left panel, under a gradated sky, a feminine figure is placed alongside another. Both are wearing adorned skirts, necklaces, and scarf-like tops, and are submerged in a body of water. Behind them, a golden moon looms, its cratered surface radiant against the sunset horizon. An empty speech bubble sprouts from one of the craters. Rocket ships streak across the heavens in crimson arcs. The central figures appear intimate yet enigmatic, their bodies partly refracted in a shimmering pool that blurs the boundary between earth and water. One figure’s tail-like extremities wrap around the other figure, signifying supernatural, otherworldly, or siren-like qualities. Above them, bold text proclaims: “SHE A GARBAGE PICKER, WHOSE FUTURE IS THE PAST, SUCKING BLOOD AND SWEAT FROM HER FINGERTIPS,” collapsing time into a cyclical, bodily metaphor. 

The right panel shifts into a different dreamscape: a figure bursts through a tear in the earth (or perhaps a portal), framed by jagged cliffs and an acid-green sky. The fissure glows with otherworldly light, suggesting an emergence or escape from subterranean depths. Surrounding them, purples and browns contrast with a turquoise and neon pink, heightening the surreal atmosphere. Above, a caption reads: “WITH FINGERNAILS LIKE SCISSORS TO RIP HOLES IN THE SKY,” while a thought bubble adds: “FROM WHICH OUR SECRETS LEAP AND FALL…”, invoking an images of rupture and revelation. A city appears in the distance beyond a thick forest, under swirling purple clouds. The piece’s saturated palette calls to mind the psychedelic poster art of the 1960s, and through its visuals and fragmentary text, the piece resists linear storytelling, instead offering a visual poem that interrogates labor and resilience across interplanetary and inner landscapes. 

The next acquired artwork, She the Question, Patience (2012) combines surrealist figuration with poetic text, offering a meditation on (dis)embodiment, memory, and transformation. At the comic panel’s center stands a headless, nude female figure, set against an alpine landscape of snow-capped mountains, violet skies, and billowing clouds. From the severed torso emerges a vivid flame—dynamic tendrils of red, orange, and yellow—perhaps symbolizing an inner fire or the soul’s unresolved turmoil. Blue droplets cascade down the figure’s right side, evoking tears or sweat, creating a visual tension between burning and weeping, passion and release. The flames emerging from the center of the lower body do not overtake or destroy the figure; rather, they add to the presence and strong stance of the female lower body. Above, an descriptive narration framed in ochre reads like an invocation, situating the speaker between cosmic forces of “patience” and “amnesia,” personified as celestial bodies in orbit. It specifically reads, “STORIES ABOUT MYSELF THEY NEVER TOLD ME, AS PATIENCE AND AMNESIA SLID IN AND OUT OF EACH OTHER’S ORBITS, SCATTERED ME AMONGST THEIR DARKER STARS…”. This text implies that the figure is providing additional, veiled commentary on its existence and feelings, despite being a severed part of the human body. A thought bubble provides the audience with a direct view into the “mind” of the halved figure as it questions its future, bridging the corporeal and metaphysical worlds. In similarly capitalized text, the words within this thought bubble are as follows: PATIENCE,/ YOU TIED ME / TO A POLE IN THE CELLAR / AFTER IT TOOK ME / CENTURIES TO FIND / MY CENTER— / HOW MANY HOURS / MUST I WAIT, RAW / FISTS CLENCHED / IN PRAYER? 

Finally, She the Question, The History of Encounter (2012) is a three-panel work featuring surreal, allegorical imagery, blending mythic undertones with introspectiveness. In the upper panel, a figure reclines beneath a tree, seemingly unconscious or meditative, while another approaches, wrapped in flowing purple garments, speaking gently as if awaiting an epiphany. A large disembodied eye and two outstretched arms, reach toward the reclined woman from the surrounding space. The background’s verdant greens and warm earth tones evoke both sanctuary and estrangement, underscored by the caption, “THE HISTORY OF ENCOUNTER: IT IS DIFFICULT INDEED TO SEARCH FOR YOUR OWN GHOST.” The statements uttered by the woman add to the mythical and introspective nature of the visuals, with the seated woman saying, “I JUST SENT MYSELF TO THE OTHER SIDE. (ON A FACT FINDING MISSION I SUPPOSE?)”. The other woman responds with “I WONDER WHAT GIFTS SHE’LL BRING WHEN SHE RETURNS…”. 

The lower left panel shifts to an evocative tableau of longing: a woman draped in gold-trimmed fabric gazes after a departing horse. Blood is visible seeping from a wound in her torso. Behind her, a dusty path winds into an unknown distance. A thought bubble is attributed to this figure, which reads, “HER OXYGEN, THEN, RIPER BY THE MINUTE FOR MY BREATHING”.  

In the final panel, the visuals and tone turn secretive and foreboding: in the foreground, a woman’s disembodied arms, upper body and torso appear trapped or embedded within one of the two depicted buildings. An out-of-frame cloaked figure seems to press a listening ear against the violet wall of the same building, casting a dark silhouette against muted architecture. The text, “BUT SHE HAS VANISHED HER LOCK AND HIDDEN THE KEY–” lingers with a sense of unresolved mystery. The saturated palette, lyrical text, and enigmatic staging of all these works situates these pieces extremely well within a lineage of feminist surrealism and South Asian graphic narrative. 

Research contributed by 2024–2025 Block Museum Student Associates: 

Ethan Bledsoe ‘26, Environmental Science 

Gabrielle Bliss ‘25, Chemical Engineering 

Keya Soni Chaudhuri ‘27, Learning Sciences & Journalism 

Bazil Frueh ’26, Journalism 

Ann Gaither ’25, Philosophy & Political Science 

Samantha Habashy ’26, Journalism & International Studies 

Symone Harris ’26, Social Policy 

Ashley Kim ’27, Journalism 

Jaharia Knowles ’25, Journalism 

Isaac Lageschulte ’27, Cultural Anthropology 

Felipe Reis Maccari ’26, Manufacturing and Design Engineering 

Faith Magiera ’27, English Literature & Classics 

Rowan McCloskey ’25, Computer Science & Political Science 

Victoria Isabel Montinola ’27, English Literature & Legal Studies 

Vanya Saksena ’27, Economics & Global Health Studies 

Meena Sharma ’25, Learning Sciences 

Emily Shen ’26, Economics & Political Science 

Tyree Walton ’27, Environmental Science 

Roy Zhu ’25, Environmental Science & Creative Writing