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GLOBE-TROTTING

garh, has made the city her home after the death of her diplomat husband in New York City. But she continues to travel and live on both coasts. She teaches art at the University of California in Santa Cruz, and often brings issues of identity into her work. About her work House of Wheels, she says: "Well, we are a house, aren't we? We carry our own little identities, our own emotions wherever we go. Wherever you are, you make your home."
While Hashmi is philosophical about the loss of her Indian homeland, New Jersey-based Ela Shah has found it traumatic to adjust to a new culture and her canvases reflect her dislocation and loss. She explains, "The childlike figure reflects my efforts to survive in a different culture."
Shah, who has served as chairperson of the 700-member New York National Association of Women Artists, has taken a show of 70 mainstream artists to India. She exhibited her work in a group show at the Artists Space in New York City recently and this month she has a solo exhibition at Jehangir Art Gallery in Bombay. She is gradually coming to terms with her new Indian-American identity, but India continues to be a reservoir of inspiration for her.
Thirty years after leaving India, Arun Bose still listens to Tagore songs as he pains his canvasses, using modern hard-edged techniques for very Indian themes. Mohan Samant's massive sculptural paintings with their wire figures often have Indian titles such as Sita haran or Ashav-medha.

[[two images, bottom left]] House of Wheels by Hashmi (top) and Ganesh by Safrani

[[two images, top left]] Vijay Kumar and his Indian Portfolio

WHILE some of these artists view India dispassionately as distant observers, for others it is the life-force which runs through their work. Vijay Kumar, who teaches printmaking at the Manhattan Graphics Center, which he founded along with other artists in 1970, has lived in New York City for over 20 years. Yet India is still very much a part of his psyche. The trauma of 1947 and the recent riots continue to colour his work. The result was Betrayal, a series of stunning prints that capture the pain of communalism.
The set of 18 prints was bought by The New York Public Library as well as the Museum of Modern Art for their permanent collections. In spite of all the accolades abroad, Kumar longs to show his controversial prints in India because only then does he feel his work will be validated.
Natter Bhavsar's unbelievable colours are dispersed in rangoli fashion on his canvases which can be seen in the collections of several museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the Guggenheim Museum.
Shehbaz H. Safrani, whose one-man show was held recently at the Pharos Gallery in New York City, has had several showings of his work, both in India and abroad. He won Rome's prestigious gold medal Premio Minerva, and Bernado Bertolucci commissioned him to do the artwork for his film Little Buddha. Safran has also written several art catalogues, lectured extensively on Indian art, and curated many art exhibitions including 'Turkish Romance: Art from East and West' in Memphis, Tennessee.
Even in this show, he found a way to include Indian art, linking in stylistically with that of the Ottomans. He admits: "What remains the bottom line of my life, of all my creative endeavors is the earth of my motherland, my beloved India." Vinod Dave, who came to New York on a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Fellowship, is an artist who has developed quite a following for his stunning mixed-media works. There is little doubt that the work of these artists would have been very different had they never left India. "What Vijay Kumar did with the Indian Portfolio is an amazing melding of graphic photo-etching techniques which he  teaches in New York but with a profound social, philosophical and political background which comes from his personal experience of the Partition" says Arun Bose.
The future for Indian contemporary art in the US certainly looks promising. Indeed, it could well be following in the footsteps of Latin American art which 20 years ago fetched sums between $5,000 and $10,000 but are now sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Says Bose: "We feel that a market is developing that has a sizable potential. There's no reason why Indian art cannot take off if there is enough support from the Indian community in the West, mainly in the U.S."

MARCH 31, 1996
INDIA TODAY
161