Image: Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead
Chitra Ganesh’s ‘Journey to the Great Below’ runs from 4 July 2026 to 17 January 2027. Presented by Baltic, the exhibition is Ganesh’s first major UK solo exhibition in a public institution.
The exhibition features a new animation, newly commissioned sculptural works and a site-specific wall drawing, alongside a selection of recent paintings, prints, works on paper and mixed-media works. It premieres a new large-scale animation titled ‘Journey to the Great Below’, inspired by what is widely considered the world’s oldest recorded myth, ‘The Descent of Inanna into the Underworld’.
Inspired by the life of Enheduanna, described as the world’s earliest-named author, and the myth of ‘The Descent of Inanna into the Underworld’, a gate-like sculpture by Ganesh conjures ancient Mesopotamia. Its structure is based on the c. 2300 BCE Disc of Enheduanna, while its colours evoke lapis lazuli. Visitors are invited to step through the structure and the Votive Figure in front, retracing Inanna’s journey through seven gates.
The story follows Inanna, the Sumerian goddess of love, fecundity and war, also known as the ‘Queen of Heaven’, on a treacherous journey to face her sister and darker half, Ereshkigal, the ‘Queen of the Underworld’. The poem describes Inanna’s confrontation with death and her eventual return to the world of the living.
Over the past twenty-five years, Ganesh has developed an expansive body of work encompassing wall drawings, collage, animation, installation and sculpture. Reorienting traditional forms of storytelling around queer and femme protagonists, her world building explores themes including psychic transformation, sexuality, power and loss.
