Coordinators of SAWAL

SAWAL signifies coming together of artists and art managers in South Asia who have been working intensely and with commitment in their own geographies to expand, support and sustain art initiatives that have impacted South Asian artists’ community in the last 2 decades. The core group of SAWAL is energized by Seema Kohli (India), Anoli Perera (Sri Lanka), Salima Hashmi (Pakistan), Sangitha Thapa (Nepal) and Tayeba Begum lipi (Bangladesh).

SAWAL hopes to give visibility to the uniqueness and diversity in the art practices of women artists in South Asia. There is a large community of women who are practicing as artists in the South Asian continent in their own localities, engaging actively in ideas and concepts that are well informed by the current socio-cultural, political discourses. SAWAL is an attempt to connect these artists with each other over a long period responding to commonalities, similarities and differences that they confront in each new cultural and geographical context so that interesting manifestations of opinions and responses will be generated through art that can be new threads of contemplation for future generations of artists. Room of My Own: Revisited...is SAWAL's first art project that would bring 10 artists together representing India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal.

Seema Kohli has exhibited extensively, created installations as Public art for the Ministry of Defense. She has been part of an international traveling exhibition “Ashtanayaka” as a group show with prominent women artists. Seema has been invited to participate in the Florence Biennale (2007, 2009), The Shore Institute of Art New Jersey. She has participated in Art fairs including Arco, Spain (2009), Art Basel, Switzerland (2008, 2009). Her works were auctioned by the Bonham’s Auction House.Seema was awarded the National Lalit Kala Award (2008).
Source: ArtSlant India (URL: http://www.artslant.com/ind/events/show/82762-mystical-narratives)

Anoli Perera is currently based in Colombo and works as a full time professional artist. She has been part of the wave of artists in the 1990s who have professed a new ideological position in the art production in relation to the contemporary art knowledge and social context in Sri Lanka. Her work helped to initiate a tendency in art that is informed of feminist criticality. She, along with Jagath Weerasinghe (the main proponent of 90s Art Trend) and others founded the progressive artists initiative, Theertha International Artists Collective in 2000 that established a forum for promoting contemporary art in Sri Lanka. In 2007 Theertha was expanded to include Red Dot Gallery, an alternative art space. Director and General Secretary of Theertha since its inception, Anoli Perera engages in art administration, curation and writing on contemporary art in addition to her art making. Since 2007, she is serving as a member of the peer panel for grant giving organiztion Arts Network Asia based in Singapore.
More information visit: http://www.theertha.org/red-dot-artists/anoli-perera/anoli-perera-1/view

Salima Hashmi is the Dean at the School of Visual Arts at Beaconhouse National University, Lahore. She taught at the National College of Arts, Lahore, for 30 years. She was also the Principal of the College for 4 years, and held the post of Professor of Fine Arts. She is a painter of repute whose works have been exhibited in Pakistan and in international exhibitions. She has written extensively on the arts, and has curated exhibitions of contemporary art and traditional textile, within Pakistan as well as abroad. Salima Hashmi was the co-founder of the Rohtas Gallery in Islamabad, established in 1981, and established Rohtas-2 in Lahore in 2001. She is a human rights activist and Council Member of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.
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(Texts from Wikipedia 28 March 2010. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salima_Hashmi & VASL Website, 28 March 2010: http://www.vaslart.org/artists%20pages/Salima/document.2006-06-12.0585387620)

Tayeba Begum Lipi was born in 1969 in Gaibanha, Bangledesh. Winner of the Grand Prize at the 11th Asian Arts Biennale in 2004, she has been a major source of energy that supported contemporary art to evolve within the Bangladeshi art scene that has a growing international reputation. Her work stretches across a broad range of media and reflects a desire to engage with as wide an audience as possible. Lipi has also sought to encourage social engagement with art, promoting workshops where both the public and other artists can interact with one another. The strongest realisation of her commitment to this is shown by her involvement with (and continued coordination of) the Britto Arts Trust, a Dhaka based, non-profit, initiative that she co-founded (along with her husband and several other artists) in 2002. Set up to encourage the Dhaka art scene, Britto is also part of the international Triangle Arts Trust workshop and residency network, and as such helps to foster international relationships and cross-cultural dialogue between artistic communities.
(Text taken on 28 March 2010 from -http://www.culturebase.net/artist.php?3763)

Sangitha Thapa is a curator, co-founder and co-director of Siddhartha Art Gallery in Kathmandu, and is actively involved since twenty three years in the promotion of contemporary art from Nepal. Thapa curated over 300 shows of various Nepali and international artists at Siddhartha Art Gallery under the motto ‘…committed to investing in creativity and in promoting art that explores new ideas and mediums. She also curated shows for the gallery in other venues in Nepal, ao NAFA Gallery, Art Council, Kathmandu University Department of Fine Art and Design, and abroad. In 2009, she organized the art festival ‘Seperating Myth from Reality: Status of Women’ in Katmandu. Thapa is a fundraiser in the artistic and social field; she works as a consultant for collectors of Nepalese art and interior work for various banks, hotels and private homes. She is an art columnist for VOW magazine and Nukta Art Journal (Pakistan).
(Texts from- www.princeclausfund.org/en/what.../GUESTSandbiographies.)