A CORRESPONDENT

A group of artists with roots in the Indian subcontinent exhibited works that spoke of their status as exiles at the seventh annual Erasing Borders Exhibition of Contemporary Indian Art, presented by the Indo- American Arts Council in collaboration with New York’s Guild Gallery, August 3 to 6.

The artists with IAAC officials

The exhibition, curated by Vijay Kumar, featured paintings, drawings and prints, photographs, C-prints, photo montages and videos, and sculpture and installation. Kumar described the artists as confronting issues of sexuality, terror, disease, and multiple identities to weave together existence in a globalized context.

Amina Ahmed, the IAAC’s director of exhibitions and auctions, is herself an artist. But she has put aside that hat for now.

“It’s much easier for me to do one job at a time,” she says. Artist Urmila Mohan prefers to work with clay, having two works displayed — a bust of a woman covered by a creeper with flowers, and a found object suitcase covered with cracking clay called Terra Infirma.

“It’s not just about being a visual artist; it’s more about being a sensual artist — (as in) working with your senses,” she says. She talks about the suitcase: “It’s about how dislocation makes you unstable.

” She speaks of moving from Chennai to gain an education, first in Ahmedabad, then in New Zealand, and finally in the US.

Other artists featured include Jeet Aulakh, Samanta Batra Mehta, Nandini Chirimar, Ruby Chishti, Pritika Chowdhry, Neil Chowdhury, Erum Chughtai, Anujan Ezhikode, Reeta Gidwani-Karmarkar, Nidhi Jalan, Shaurya Kumar, Haresh Lalvani, Obaidullah Mamoon, Chetan Mangat, Urmila Mohan, Avani Patel, Pinku Roy- Bari, Talha Rathore, Rasika Reddy, Satyakam Saha, Sheena Sood, Anjali Srinivasan, Roshani Thakore and Yetish Yetish.

August 12, 7 to 9 pm, also at the Guild Gallery, actress Zenobia Shroff is to perform her one-woman show Exotic Observations, a comic monologue about Shroff ’s experiences as an immigrant and actress in New York City.

Closing night, August 24, 6 pm to 8 pm, at the same venue, the IAAC will present a book launch and a panel discussion for Krishna Reddy. Considered a master in intaglio printmaking, Reddy has been guest professor at many topranking universities in the US, and received the Padma Shri — one of India’s top civilian honors — in 1972. He has presented more than 200 solo exhibitions of his work throughout the world.The Guild Art Gallery, New York, is an offshoot of The Guild Art Galley Shalini Sawhney founded in Mumbai in 1997.