Chitra Ganesh

Art of War 1 (Sultana's Dream series)

Art of War 1, City in Broad Daylight, Leaving the House, Justice is a Virtue, and Lions are Stronger than Men are linocut prints from Sultana’s Dream. This series by Chitra Ganesh comprises a large-scale narrative suite inspired by a 1905 feminist utopian (eponymous) text written by a Bengali writer and social reformer, Rokeya Sakhhawat Hossain. Educated thanks to the support of her elite family, Hossain was one of the few Bengali women of her generation writing in English. The text “Sultana’s Dream,” though not as well known, holds a singular position among early feminist science fiction.

This series of linocut prints draws on Hossain’s text and connects with problems shaping 21st-century life: apocalyptic environmental disaster, the disturbing persistence of gender-based inequality, the power of the wealthy few against the economic struggles of the majority, and ongoing geopolitical conflicts that cause widespread death and suffering. Protests scenes, revisited myths, or dreams, the linocut scenes all illustrate an alternative future in which gender roles in India are reversed and women occupy broad-ranging positions of power. These works demonstrate the enduring relevance of utopian imaginaries in offering means of envisioning a more just future.