Anujan Ezhikode: Anujan has trained in makeup and costume making for Kutiyattam and Kathakali - South Indian theatre arts dating back to the 10th century and 17th centuries. He has studied painting and printmaking at the Art Student's League of New York. A recipient of Diverse Forms Artists' Projects: Regional Initiative Grant, Anujan’s work explores personal narratives and authorship, evoking the possibilities of time and place. He combines texture and layering, organic forms and flowing lines, to create an intimate dialogue.

Bivas Chaudhuri: Bivas was born in Calcutta. He has a Master of fine Arts, from the University of New York, and over 12 years of extensive training in Arts and Design both in India as well as in New York. He combines this exposure to traditional Indian Arts and western modern art to create mixed media monoprints composed of forms that move from an organic simplicity to a greater complexity. He chose this medium, as he believes this offers the Artist more freedom of expression and is emblematic of modern times. Chaudhuri states that Art should "Reflect the total achievement of our times". This would therefore incorporate a variety of skills, including those of the Sciences, The Arts, And Technology.

Chitra Ganesh: Born and raised in NYC, Chitra received a BA Magna Cum Laude from Brown University, and an MFA from Columbia University in 2002. Recipient of several prestigious awards and residencies, she is currently the recipient of an emerging artist workspace grant from the Center for Book Arts, and a residency at the Artists' Alliance n the Lower East Side.

Ela Shah: ELa began painting at a very early age in India where she learned Indian miniature painting techniques as well as various Western styles. She received her M.A. in sculpture at Montclair State University. Ela’s work addresses the conflicts between the spiritual and material world. It depicts how women keep faith in the modern world, their hopes, fears, pleasures and pains, as well as their confusions between a family life and a successful career

Madhvi Subrahmanian: Born in Mumbai, India, Madhvi now lives and works in Princeton, New Jersey. Currently she teaches Ceramics at The Arts Council Of Princeton and is a Docent At the Princeton Art Museum. On her work that is part of this exhibit, Madhvi says, ‘the forms I am compelled to make repeatedly and explore sculpturally revolve around the theme of the seed and the pod - containers that hold, protect, and nurture. “Hieroglyphs” is one such piece that represents abstract organic objects in combination with the idea of language and letters that hold, protect and preserve meaning.

Murali Harathi: An architect by training, Murali uses his artistic talent to show his appreciation for the stately buildings of his birthplace, Hyderabad.

His watercolors render the doodling complexities of ancient Indian architecture with precision and a certain romantic flair. Wednesday, November 10, 2004(Dan Bischoff Star Ledger). So much of India's heritage has been lost due to the climate, greed, and illegal trade. Those who cannot make to India can at least see its amazing heritage through the illustrated works of artists like Harathi. …Omar Khalidi Aga Khan Program Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Nandini Chirimar: Nandini received a BFA in Drawing and Painting from Cornell University (1990) and MFA in painting from the Maryland Institute, College of Art (1993). She has spent four years in Tokyo learning Japanese Woodblock Printing (Hanga), exhibiting her work and teaching art. In 2004 Nandini was invited to participate in the prestigious CWAJ Print show in Tokyo

Nandini has worked in many media including painting, handmade paper, mixed media and printmaking. Her work is inspired by her visual and cultural experiences of different cities she has lived in or visited. She explores their architecture, color, objects and pop culture, expressing it with her own abstract rhetoric

Nitin Mukul: Born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, Nitin did his Bachelor of Fine Art at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He has also studied at the Amsterdam School of the Arts, Netherlands. Nitin says, ‘in a loosely autobiographical sense, my work is inevitably linked to being the first generation in the family to be born in America, which creates a duality marked by a removed and at once direct presence of culture, religion, values and ethos. Through art I am able to reconcile this gap and celebrate the richness of the culture of India, which I inherited, and that of America, which is, mine by birth. A sense of vertigo, of being neither here nor there, often pervades.’ He frequently combines images from a variety of sources, including his own photographs and everyday objects into studies for his paintings. Themes include the perpetuation of stereotypes through popular culture, social formations and survival instincts common to all creatures, and the effect of cultural and physical displacement on identity.

Reeta Karmarkar: Reeta’s longstanding passion for art bursts forth in her words, ‘from the time I held a crayon as a child all I ever wanted to do was paint’. She started out as a figurative painter; but over time and study at the Accademia di belle arti, in Rome she discovered a joy in untangling or tangling with perspective. Her inspiration was architecture in fourteeth century Italian art; i.e. Paolo Uccello, Piero della francesca and Rafaello. She took out the figures to form powerful perspectives. Her work is a continual search for how far the mind fools the eye dimensionally on a flat surface. Her murals (on four apartment buildings, each 23.10 meters high and 12.60 meters wide,) in Rome, illustrate this best. The work in this exhibit also reveals the same talent, this time expressed with Acrylic on canvas.

Salma Arastu: Salma has an MFA from Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda, India. She has had several exhibitions and won several awards. Some of her works direct influences of Indian folk or miniature art. Others are total abstracts. Salma has made an effort to bring together eastern spirituality and western techniques of painting that she has learned over the years. Through the contrasting elements in her work, she says, ‘I yearn and search for unity and when that unity or balance is achieved, it brings about a tranquility and joy’. In this exhibit we see Salma’s exquisite work using mixed media on wood board.

Satish Joshi: Satish Joshi was born in India in 1945. He graduated from the New Delhi College of Art and has taught at Riverdale Country School since 1974. Satish began as a painter and printmaker and moved gradually into the realm of sculpture. His paintings are created on canvas or wood using a combination of acrylic modeling paste, gesso, and oil paints, through which he creates painted textured surfaces with a three-dimensional appearance. His own personal style is that of abstract expressionism Working on shaped palettes of wood, Satish gives the viewer the illusion of being inside, gazing outward through a window, while simultaneously sharing his inner private vision. Satish is also known for his figurative paintings of enigmatic nudes, a series that illustrates his keen desire to incorporate his skill at figurative stone carving into the flat surfaces of his paintings.

Siona Benjamin: Siona Benjamin is a painter originally from Bombay, now living in the US. Siona has her first MFA in painting and a second MFA in Theater set design. Her work reflects her background of being brought up Jewish in a predominantly Hindu and Muslim India. In her paintings she combines the imagery of her past with the role she plays in America today, making a mosaic inspired by both Indian miniature paintings and Sephardic icons. In her currently exhibited series entitled "Finding Home" - a brilliant series of paintings on paper in gouache and gold leaf, she raises questions about what and where is "home", while evoking issues such as identity, immigration, motherhood, and the role of art in social change. Siona’s paintings reek of her strong sentiment, ‘The feeling I have of never being able to set deep roots no matter where I am is unnerving, but on the other hand, there is something seductive about the spiritual borderland in which I seem to find myself.’

Tara Sabharwal: Tara was born in India and studied painting in Baroda Art College, a college unique in its emphasis on both Indian and Western art and aesthetics. She has an MA (RCA) in Painting from the Royal College of Art, London and has been a long time teacher and exhibitor of her art in Europe and the US. ‘In my paintings’, she says, ‘I am interested in evoking a sense of mood, often connected with specific events and places, and especially those suggestive of dream and of memory. The figures are neither metaphors beyond themselves nor are they purely what they depict; the aim is to hold the mind in suspension over a field of possibilities rather than arrest it in a concept’.

Vijay Kumar: Vijay Kumar studied art at Triveni Kala Sangam in New Delhi, and at Pratt Graphics Center in NYC. He has had many shows of his drawings, prints and paintings in the U.S. and abroad. Vijay has worked extensively in printmaking techniques and currently teaches etching at Manhattan Graphics Center in NYC, and in Garrison (NY), South Norwalk (CT) and Summit (NJ). His work is in many collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum and the New York Public Library (all in NYC), the William Benton Museum of Art in Storrs, Connecticut, the National Gallery of Art in New Delhi, and the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, UK

‘Dave's paintings reference Bollywood kitsch, comic books and the gods and goddesses whose images are found on common objects such as matchbooks, firecracker boxes, beedi cigarette packs and gaudy religious posters. Dave mines the vernacular of popular culture and traditional imagery, filtering it through his contemporaneity as an artist of the South Asian diaspora’

Vijay Kumar states “When our new Indian Consul General Neelamji, asked Aroon and me to put together an art exhibit at the Indian Consulate, it made me remember the art show held there in the 1980’s (unfortunately two artists from that show, Francis N. Souza and Mohan Samant, are no longer with us)... .At that time there were no galleries in New York showing contemporary Indian art, and very little work by contemporary Indian artists was even being exhibited here....We Indian artists living in and around New York City (there were quite many of us), even though we didn’t have any group status, were trying to find places for exhibiting our work. We were able to have three shows at the Permanent Mission of India Building. It was a wonderful opportunity for our artist community to come together socially as well as professionally.

It’s a very different time now in New York City. We have four or five galleries run by Indians and showing contemporary work by artists from the Indian subcontinent. Indian art is in demand. New artists are gaining recognition. We are very pleased to be able to put on this exhibition. However, because of limited space, we could not invite many of our artist friends to participate this time...hopefully we’ll get another chance for another exhibition in the near future....

The Indo-American Arts Council is a not-for-profit 501©3 arts council passionately dedicated to promoting, showcasing and building an awareness of Indian artists in North America. For further information on this exhibition, the artists and the Indo-American Arts Council, please visit .