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May 2001 New York - Bose Pacia Modern presents
"Shaken and Stirred", a juried exhibition from members of the South Asian Women's Creative Collective (SAWCC). The show will run from May 1 through June 1, 2001 at Bose Pacia Modern, 508 W. 26th Street, 11th floor. An opening reception will be held Friday, May 4th from 7-9 pm. and a gallery talk will be conducted on Saturday, May 5th from 3-5 p.m. In addition, writers and performance artists from SAWCC will present a spoken word event on Thursday May 17th from 7-9 pm.
Shaken and Stirred, juried by
Rina Banerjee and Barbara Hunt, explores connections between categories of the body, history and geography. The artists shake and stir these categories. Their works comment on tradition, modernity, colonial dislocation and subjective experience.
SAWCC provides a forum for South Asian women artists to profile their work and to network with other South Asian women artists, educators, community workers, and professionals. From an initial collective of twelve, SAWCC has grown to a membership of almost 400 women and has participated in numerous New York exhibitions. From last year's SAWCC visual arts show (Un)suitable Girls, hosted by Paisley, curator Neyda Martinez selected works to exhibit at Joseph Papp Public Theater's Shiva Gallery during the annual New Works Now! festival. Last Fall, Exit Art approached SAWCC to create a performance and video event, entitled "Coded Bodies" to complement their Paradise Now exhibition. The SAWCC board has been involved with programming for the National Center for Performing Arts in Mumbai, as well as the Asian Arts Initiative in Philadelphia.
This collaboration between a private gallery and a not-for-profit group such as SAWCC is groundbreaking, and is the first time SAWCC was invited to submit a proposal for an exhibition in a prominent Chelsea gallery. Since1994, Bose Pacia Modern has established itself as the first and premier, full-time venue in North America dedicated to the diverse art of modern India. Bose Pacia Modern promotes, documents, and makes these works available on a continuing basis, which have previously been essentially unrepresented in the United States.
JURORS
Rina Banerjee was educated in Painting and Printmaking at Yale University, and has taught at the University of Chicago, Pennsylvania State University, and Bucknell College. Her most recent installations were exhibited in the Whitney Biennial 2000 and at Bose Pacia Modern, Debs & Co., and Admit One Gallery.
Barbara Hunt is the Executive Director of Artists Space, and has worked as Director of Visual AIDS, New York and Camerawork Gallery + Darkroom, London, UK. A member of Godzilla, Asian American Art Network, and a former board member and Chair of the African and Asian Visual Artists Archive in London, she has been active in creating dialogue within the Asian arts community for over 15 years.
ARTISTS
Dhruvi Acharya is a painter who has exhibited in both India and the United States. She considers her painting to be an exploration of, solitude, loneliness, speech, and communications. She attributes her style to such disparate influences as Mughal miniatures and comic books.
Neena Arora is an installation and video artist who has shown work at galleries in Canada and the United States. Her work references issues of identity and body, examining the relationship between the viewer and the viewed along the way.
Anjali Bhargava is a photographer who is primarily concerned with portraiture. She is currently working on a series of portraits of South Asian women using color infrared film. Though the film is unusual and was developed for military use, she finds that the red tones of the film add a unique quality to her images.
Safia Fatimi is a photographer who has received the PDN/Nikon award both in the new talent category as well as for her website. Her current project documents the timeless daily rhythm of life for her grandfather, Shankamani Pradhan who is a 92 year old pradhan in Kalimpong, India.
Chitra Ganesh is a painter who has exhibited her work in North America, South America and India. Her current project examines, among other themes, the body, costume, myth and violence.
Rachel Kalpana James is a photographer and installation artist whose current project, and intervention-installation entitled Tagore and Mrs. E which explores the construction of history and identity through images, text and objects.
Swati Khurana is a visual artist working in video, installation and sculpture and has exhibited and screened her work in the U.S., Canada, Italy, England, India and Nepal. Her current work is interested in the exploring the metaphors of tourism and import-export economies.
Tara Sabharwal is a painter who has shown work in India, England and the United States. Her current series of monotypes are an exploration of a place which can reliably be said to be hers: the world beneath her skin, a world of organs, cells, blood vessels, activity and order.
Tamara Sanowar-Makhan is a poet, photographer, installation artist and activist who has shown work in Canada and the United States. She uses materials such as common domestic objects, family artifacts and hair to address issues of sexism, racism and domestic violence.
Sarika Seth is a photographer whose most recent project documents the skill of tying a sari and in the process examines the relevance of this garment to a generation of South Asian women who have grown up without this skill.
Sonya Shah is currently a Jacob Javitz fellow and a former Fulbright fellow and is currently working on a full-length feature film exploring the vagaries of the relationship between Pakistan and India through the sport of cricket.