Protecting Their True Voice
South Asian Women’s Creative Collective is a friend of artists


By Lavina Melwani
Lavina Melwani is a freelance writer.

August 20, 2003

Begun in 1997 by Jaishri Abichandani of Corona, the South Asian Women’s Creative Collective offers space for dancers, filmmakers, musicians and painters to shatter stereotypes and reimagine their world through the arts.

The emphasis is finding one’s true voice without regard to market pressures, which can pigeonhole or marginalize ethnic artists, said Abichandani, who’s director of special events for the Queens Museum.

"Often, what happens is that artists have to empty or remove a lot of their cultural sensibility to gain wider acceptance," she said. "This evacuation of cultural identity from the international, contemporary art context is why SAWCC becomes so necessary."

Friday night, members of the South Asian Women’s Creative Collective will be holding a fund-raising gala to highlight its sixth annual Visual Arts Show, an installation of works by 11 of the artists, which will remain on display through Saturday. The show’s photography, painting and installation art were selected by Shamim Momin and Raina Lampkins-Fielder, curators with the Whitney Museum of American Art.

The evening includes music and dance performances from 7 to 9 p.m. at the BosePacia Modern Gallery, 508 W. 26th St., 11th floor. Among the events, filmmaker Meera Nair will read from her collection of short stories, "Video" (Pantheon), called one of the best books of 2002 by The Washington Post. Yamini Nayar of Brooklyn will perform with her musical group, Kalikut Roots Collective, which draws on South Asian traditions. A $10 donation is suggested.

The collective, which receives city funding, has a core mission of artistic expression and independence.

"Basically, we feel South Asian women have not had a space in the mainstream art world," said Prerana Reddy, a board member of the collective who lives in Brooklyn. "Our aim is to develop artists’ work and give them a space for exhibition where curators can see it. We want to show there’s a high level of work and we always seek curators that are well-known."

Safia Fatimi, a successful commercial artist, said, "Before SAWCC, I didn’t have any South Asian friends at all. I didn’t know there were South Asian artists; I thought I was the only one.

"The South Asians I met were engineers or going to medical school, and every time I talked to them about art, they kind of looked at me as if I was strange. And then I came across this group and it completely changed my life."

The collective holds meetings once a month.

"There’s no fee for membership," Abichandani said. "You just have to be a South Asian woman with an interest in art and show up at the meetings."

Many emerging artists have found a fertile nurturing ground and have gone on to have their work shown in galleries. The collective has received support from noted artists such as Shazia Sikander as well as from Nair, who donated an advance screening of "Monsoon Wedding" to help raise funds for the organization.

Sunita S. Mukhi, director of the Charles B. Wang Center for Asian American Culture at Stony Brook University, is a performance artist who will be appearing Friday night.

"I think it’s a very important part of the desi" - or South Asian - "community because it provides a very lively space for young artists of every kind, from performers to visual to dance to poetry, to come together in this very safe space to express their art and work on it together," Mukhi said.

The collective is at 16 W. 32nd St., 10th floor, Manhattan. For more information, visit www.sawcc.org on the Internet.
Copyright © 2003, Newsday, Inc.