29/ Metropolis

2018
By Chitra Ganesh
Duration: 1:25 min.
Recommended by Wendi Norris and Matea Fish

How does this work investigate “hope?”
Hope is an ever-present undercurrent of Chitra Ganesh’s Metropolis, where the line between utopia and dystopia is blurred and the desire for such an imagined future is called into question. We witness the journey toward enlightenment corrupted by the rise of a dystopian surveillance state, the Future Buddha, "Maitreya," represented both as traditional Buddhist sculpture and as tragic heroine or villain of modern science fiction. Ganesh asks us to consider what comes after hope, when the future that had been hoped for has morphed into something completely unrecognizable.

About the work:
“Metropolis alludes to the painting Life Scenes of Master Shantarakshita, in the collection of the Rubin Museum, and Fritz Lang's 1927 expressionist science fiction film of the same name. I was interested in Shantarakshita's critical role as a translator of scriptures and an overseer of the construction of Samye, the first Tibetan monastery, after the Buddhist master Padmasambhava cleared the Tibetan plateau of troubling spirits. The narrative is structured as a progression through a series of interlocking environments, starting and ending in deep space and culminating in the apocalyptic resurrection of Maitreya. Here, the future Maitreya appears as a multi-limbed cyborg entity, constructed of hybrid elements invoking Aelita, Queen of Mars; the Futura of Lang's Metropolis; and bronze sculptures of Maitreya in the Rubin's collection. I was interested in how the first monastery and the surrounding development of a city from the deep past could offer a gateway of connection to the science fictive urban dystopias associated with the apocalyptic futures. These dystopias include worlds characterized by stark class divisions, imperialist ambitions, and inequitable access to resources, much like our own world, and are featured in Lang's film and the contemporary science fiction writings of Octavia E. Butler, Philip K. Dick, and Manjula Padmanabhan.” —Chitra Ganesh