Durham Press is proud to release an ambitious new portfolio of 27 relief prints by Chitra Ganesh titled, Sultana’s Dream. Inspired by Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s early twentieth-century story of the same title, the prints—all black linocuts on tan paper—both illustrate elements of the text and use its imagery and themes to explore urgent topics of the political present.
Ganesh literally interprets certain moments from this pioneering work of feminist science fiction: and also connects it to, as she says, “problems shaping twenty-first-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.”
Like much of Ganesh’s work, Sultana’s Dream engages these subjects through the lens of history, literature, and mythology not only to examine the relationship between imagined and lived worlds but also to consider how utopian fantasies might be realized.
The prints are available as a boxed portfolio, which includes a colophon with an introduction by the author as well as a booklet featuring Hossain’s story and a critical essay by Saisha Grayson, curator at the Smithsonian Museum of American Art. Individual works are also available, though on a limited basis.