Kiran Chandra Brings The Soul of the White Ant to Wave Hill’s Sunroom Project Space
Kiran Chandra, the first artist in Wave Hill’s 2015 Sunroom Project Space, draws from fields as diverse as literature, philosophy, biology and anthropology, to investigate the systems that connect language, ecology and politics. At Wave Hill, Chandra creates a mixed-media installation that explores the nature of non-human intelligence and empathy. She draws from The Soul of the White Ant (1925) by Eugène Marais, the South African poet, writer and naturalist who spent his life studying termites. Rather than representing the text literally, the installation evokes the spirit of Marais’ observations about the complex social behavior of termite colonies.
Chandra’s installation includes expansive drawings and an interactive sculpture in which individual parts work together as a unitary whole, just as termites comprise the collective organism of the termitary. In the ink and pencil drawings, for example, Chandra uses a stencil, which she traces, shifts, overlaps and retraces; the traced outlines are then filled in with ink, one form dissolving into another, creating new contours. Through repetition and doubling, a single shape has formed clusters of abstract forms that recall masses of fauna and flora. The installation also includes a multifaceted sculpture made of individual panels hinged together to allow relative movement. Visitors can reposition the wall-fastened sculpture, allowing them to become engaged participants, manipulating the piece within a fixed structure. Through the viewer experience, Chandra’s project becomesa vehicle for conveying Marais’ ideas about group psyche.
Born and raised in Kolkata, India, Chandra earned an Honors BA from St. Stephen’s College of Delhi University, a BFA from Lesley University’s Art Institute of Boston and an MFA from Hunter College. She has shown widely in the United States and abroad, and has been awarded, among other prizes, a Cisneros Scholarship, a BRIC Media Arts Fellowship and a Women’s Edge Award. She has attended residencies in Mexico City, Florence and New York. Chandra is a co-founder of Temporary Agency, an artist-run, alternative space.
Organized by Curator of Visual Arts Gabriel de Guzman, the Sunroom Project Space provides an opportunity for New York-area emerging artists to develop a special project or site-specific work to exhibit in a solo show. The artists participating in the 2015 season are, consecutively, Kiran Chandra, Tamara Johnson, Eto Otitigbe, aricoco, Holly Veselka, Julian Chams and Beatrice Glow.
Wave Hill’s Sunroom Project Space is supported in part by the Milton & Sally Avery Arts Foundation. Additional support for the Visual Arts is provided by the New York Community Trust, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and by the Cathy and Stephen Weinroth Commissioning Fund for the Arts.
Wave Hill, Inc. is an independent, non-profit cultural institution governed by a volunteer Board of Directors. The buildings and grounds of Wave Hill are owned by the City of New York. With the assistance of the Bronx Borough President and Bronx representatives in the City Council and State Legislature, Wave Hill’s operations are supported with public funds through the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; the Zoos, Botanical Gardens and Aquariums Grant Program administered by the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation; the National Endowment for the Arts; the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation; and the New York State Council on the Arts.
