Chitra Ganesh’s ‘Journey to the Great Below’ is one of the finest shows of the year and you can still see it at Baltic.

This showstopper brings the world’s oldest recorded myth, the Sumerian descent of the goddess Inanna into the underworld, crashing into the twenty-first century. Rooted in sci-fi aesthetics, anime, and South Asian visual culture, the exhibition presents a sprawling universe populated by queer, femme, and shape-shifting protagonists. Across Level 4, large-scale animations, site-specific wall drawings, and monumental sculptures, including a magnified silk hand and a towering eye inspired by ancient artefacts, turn the gallery into an immersive, speculative landscape. Ganesh masterfully weaves Mesopotamian cosmology with contemporary anxieties over climate and politics. The result is a striking, resilient vision of hope in precarious times, offering a rare chance to see an artist at the absolute peak of her world-building powers.

Chitra Ganesh: Journey to the Great Below, until 17 January, Baltic, Gateshead, baltic.art