Welded painted steel, 111 x 87 x 48, 2019.
Nonextant.
Ganesha is the pot-bellied god, and the sculpture takes the epithet literally: the belly is a firebox behind a mesh window, a pot-bellied stove, and when it is lit the smoke rises around the figure. The pun is plain and exact. Ganesha’s belly is said to hold the universe, and a stove is the hearth of a room, the place where a household keeps its fire.
The fire has a second office. In the Vedic fire ritual the flame is the mouth through which offerings reach the gods, and Ganesha is invoked before any other god, so the first offering is his. A fire in his belly joins the two: the god who is addressed first, and the fire that carries what is addressed to him.
