Roshan Ganu | पौर्णिमा: Gazing Into The Full Moon Night

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 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.

About the Artist

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 a 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 own universal language and constructions of time? 

Ganu has conceptualized and directed stories for the Minneapolis Institute of Art and the Minnesota Opera. Ganu is an awardee of the Mini Operas Big Ideas grant by MN Opera and has received the competitive Next Step Fund Grant in 2021 from the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council. She is also the recipient of the Artists Respond: Combating Social Isolation grant from Springboard For The Arts, through which she co-founded ‘Aapli Library,’ a zine space for community and conversation in Minneapolis. She just 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. As a narrative artist, she has taught storytelling/comic-making workshops focusing on personal narratives at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, South Asian Wellness Organisation SEWA-Aifw, Socially Engaged Craft Collective, KCLAS in India, and Aapli Library. The Star Tribune, Post Bulletin, Brooklyn Rail, MinnPost, MPLSArt, and SOTA podcast have recognized her work with interviews and articles.

Artist Talk

Join us for a conversation in Roshan Ganu's immersive exhibition , ​“पौर्णिमा: Gazing Into The Full Moon Night", between Roshan and curator Erin Gleeson. They will discuss process and concepts in Roshan's work and open it up for your questions. 

About the Curator

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 with 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 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. n Studies, University of London (2015-2018).

Gallery Hours

Wednesday - Friday 1pm - 6pm 

Saturday – Sunday 11am - 5pm.

Masks required.

This exhibition is proudly part of TC Arts week October 12-16, 2022. Learn More.