The Indo-American Arts Council's 6th Annual Erasing Borders Exhibition features work by 27 artists whose origins can be traced to the Indian subcontinent. Twenty million people of Indian origin shifted countries in the 20th and 21st centuries. Implicit in the term Diaspora are the concepts of change and adaptation. Cultural dislocation generally produces unexpected and powerful results. Subject matter is often drawn from the country of origin, while many of the aesthetic values and political concerns come from the artists'newfound situations. Indian artists that went abroad after India's independence from British rule grappled with dual aesthetic concerns (modernity versus tradition) and with the complex issue of identity. The Diaspora artists had to create an authentic artistic language possessing Indian aesthetic components in order to be taken seriously by critics, as well as to reconcile the issues associated with being minorities. Today's Diaspora artists are scattered across the country and are more socio-economically and religiously diverse than their predecessors. These artists are working to make themselves heard in an art world that is at once more competitive and more receptive to non-Western art than ever before. The artists in this exhibition take on diverse subject matter and meld Indian and Western colors and forms in many media, including painting, drawing, and prints; photographs, C-prints, photomontage, and video; and sculpture and installation. IAAC Director of Exhibitions: Amina Begum Ahmed.

Curated by Vijay Kumar.

Participating artists:

• Niyeti Chadha Kannal
• Nandini Chirimar
• Khalil Chishtee
• Neil Chowdhury
• Pritika Chowdhry
• Anjali Deshmukh
• Anujan Ezhikode
• Indira Freitas Johnson
• Asha Ganpat
• Ina Kaur
• Adil Mansuri
• Divya Mehra
• Samanta Batra Mehta
• Indrani Nayar-Gall

• Jagdish Prabhu
• Antonio Puri
• Alka Raghuram
• Gautam Rao
• Amin Rehman
• Tara Sabharwal
• Pallavi Sharma
• Mumtaz Hussain
• Reeta Gidwani Karmarkar
• Haresh Lalvani
• Alakananda Mukerji
• Veru Narula
• Prince Varughese Thomas

The Indo-American Arts Council Inc. is a registered 501(c)3 not-for-profit, secular service and resource arts organization charged with the mission of promoting and building the awareness, creation, production, exhibition, publication and performance of Indian and cross-cultural art forms in North America. The IAAC supports all artistic disciplines in the classical, fusion, folk and innovative forms influenced by the arts of India. We work cooperatively with colleagues around the United States to broaden our collective audiences and to create a network for shared information, resources and funding. Our focus is to work with artists and arts organizations in North America as well as to facilitate artists and arts organizations from India to exhibit, perform, and produce their works