The Future of Feminism

Reignited over the past few years, the U.S. Women’s Rights Movement has taken many forms, including the Women’s March on Washington, #MeToo, and Time’s Up—but where does it go from here?

To kick off her Face of the Future fellowship, artist Chitra Ganesh sits down with activist and co-chair of the Women’s March on Washington Linda Sarsour. Recognized for her focus on intersectional movement building, Sarsour was honored by the White House in 2011 as a “Champion of Change.” In this onstage conversation, she and Ganesh discuss the future of feminism as it relates to both of their bodies of work.

This program is made possible by Rasika and Girish Reddy, Manoj and Rita Singh, and the Akhoury Foundation.

About the Speakers

Linda Sarsour is a working woman, community activist, and mother of three. She is a Palestinian Muslim American and a self-proclaimed “pure New Yorker, born and raised in Brooklyn!” Linda is the former executive director of the Arab American Association of New York and co-chair of the Women’s March on Washington, which advocated for just legislation and policies regarding human rights and other issues in the largest single-day demonstration in U.S. history. Linda is most notably recognized for her focus on intersectional movement building. Linda was recently named American Muslim of the Year by the largest Muslim civil rights organization in the United States, honored by the White House in 2011 as a “Champion of Change,” and received the 2010 Brooklyn Do-Gooder Award from the Brooklyn Community Foundation. Linda is also a board member of the New York Immigration Coalition and the Network of Arab American Professionals-NY Chapter.

In her drawing-based practice, Chitra Ganesh brings to light narrative representations of femininity, sexuality, and power that are typically absent from canons of literature and art. Her wall installations, comics, charcoal drawings, and mixed-media works often take historical and mythic texts as inspiration and points of departure to complicate received ideas of iconic female forms. Her vocabulary pulls from surrealism, expressionism, Hindu and Buddhist iconography, and traditional South Asian pictorial forms, connecting these sources with contemporary mass-mediated visual languages.

Ganesh graduated magna cum laude from Brown University with a BA in Comparative Literature and Art-Semiotics, and received her MFA from Columbia University in 2002. For over a decade, Ganesh’s work has been widely exhibited both locally and internationally, including at the Queens Museum, Museum of San Diego La Jolla, Berkeley Art Museum, Bronx Museum, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and Baltimore Museum. Her works are held in prominent public collections such as the Philadelphia Museum of Art, San Jose Museum of Art, Baltimore Museum, the Whitney Museum, and Museum of Modern Art.

Image Credit

Chitra Ganesh (b. 1975, Brooklyn, NY); Rainbow Body (still); 2018; digital animation; courtesy of the artist