The Future of Mythology

Where does mythology end and science fiction begin? How are these genres adapting to our present and future understandings of self-justice and a collectively shared vision of humanity as we march together toward the future?

Science fiction writer and editor Mimi Mondal, a recent Hugo Award nominee, will speak with artist Chitra Ganesh about the contextual links and friction between myth and science fiction on the South Asian subcontinent as well as its diaspora. Mondal’s consideration of the intricate and complex strands of storytelling in science fiction will inspire a conversation about providing fresh models of critique and imagination as we move forward in challenging times.

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

About the Speakers

Mimi Mondal is a Dalit writer of speculative fiction and social justice nonfiction and the first Hugo Award nominee from India. Her first book, Luminescent Threads: Connections to Octavia Butler, edited with Alexandra Pierce, is a finalist for the Hugo Awards 2018 and longlisted for the Locus Awards 2018. Between 2017 and 2018, she worked as the Poetry and Reprint Editor of Uncanny Magazine, a two-time Hugo Award”“winning magazine of science fiction and fantasy. Mimi’s writing has appeared in Tor.com, Words Without Borders, Uncanny Magazine, The Book Smugglers, Podcastle, Daily Science Fiction, Scroll.in, and other publications. She is the recipient of the Immigrant Artist Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts in 2017; the Octavia E. Butler Scholarship for the Clarion West Writing Workshop in 2015; and the Poetry with Prakriti Prize in 2010.

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. Chitra 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