South Asian Artists Exhibit a Diverse Range of Vision, Styles in Debut Exhibit

Bala Thiagarajan is a woman with a mission. She formed the Colorado South Asian Artists Group to showcase not just the talent of creative people in the state who have roots in South Asia — including India, Pakistan, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Myanmar... you get the idea — but also the diversity of that talent. Like the food of the region, we in the West tend to lump the many cultures of South Asia into one stereotyped image.

"Oh my goodness, the amount of education I am doing just with that, right?" she says, laughing about how little people here might know about the vast area of the South Asian continent, and the literally hundreds of languages, cultures and cuisines that come from the region.

"This group is filling a need because of the lack of education and the awareness that goes with 'South Asian,'" she adds. "If people are not even aware of a geography, how are they going to name anything about the history or the culture? People will tell me, 'Oh, I love Indian food,' but then they can't differentiate anything between Indian food and Pakistani food or Bangladeshi food or Nepali food. To them, it's all the same curry."
The same educational efforts are needed not just with food, but in aesthetics in general, she says. "Because it's about more than just the art, right? It's about the community."

In curating Roots & Routes: Where Cultural Roots Meet Creative Journeys, an exhibit that opens Friday, September 5, at Englewood CityCenter, Thiagarajan didn't want to dictate what "South Asian Art" should look like, and invited anyone of South Asian descent to submit work to express their own creativity.

"Even though there was some amount of curation, we decided we are not going to be one of those, 'Hey we want all works to look like a gallery,'" she says. "That's not the goal of this first show. It is to bring people together, so whoever wanted to apply, we said, 'As long as you're South Asian, you're 18 years or older and you live in Colorado, we will accept one of your pieces.'"
That open invitation has resulted in an exhibit with a surprising range of styles and media, from painting and ceramics to photography and sculpture. The 22 artists represented showcase a variety of perspectives that represent the South Asian diaspora and beyond, with artists who have created work in other countries around the globe but now live here.

Thiagarajan's art is on display with her application of paint applied like dots of Indian henna tattoos that are familiar in the West, but there are works that evoke Western landscapes as well as Western expressionist paintings, and photorealistic images as well as more abstract work. She hopes all of the diversity will introduce these individual artists' work to the public and also serve as a gateway to the local South Asian arts community as a group.

"I mean, it still is challenging. I am hoping that this group and the different varieties of art that people are going to see is going to open up more conversations and a bit of curiosity," she says.

That curiosity could come from her paintings of mandalas, Buddhist or Hindu geometric symbols that have become familiar in the West. "Mandalas, people get it," she says. "Half the time, they confuse what I do with the Tibetan sand mandalas that Buddhist monks do, which is fine. It kind of gives a nice segue to talk about what I do, but they also don't get it that mandalas are almost universal. In so many cultures, it's prevalent. So I paint mandalas for a reason and I don't paint mountains."
Landscapes of mountains might be easier to sell, and some South Asian artists are strong landscape artists, she notes. But that decision to make art of one over the other is at the heart of the group, she notes. "We have had a couple of meetings where the members have talked about this; finding the balance between our identities and what fits in."

Fitting in was the reason she first dreamed of starting the group two years ago. "When I moved to Colorado, I was like, 'Hey, where do I belong?' And some of the people I talked to basically said, 'Oh, if you need a community, you have to build your own.'" So she did, and found others who also felt disconnected.

"They just want to fit in," she says. Her group — which she hopes can become a non-profit organization in the future — started with a first meeting in March with six artists. In May, there were twelve attendees. Now, there are 35 artists who communicate with each other on WhatsApp.

"Every person has this very interesting story, but also one of the things to remember here is that not all these artists have a connection in the sense that there's a good chunk of us who are first generation in the U.S., but not necessarily first generation from South Asia," Thiagarajan adds. "One photographer calls himself Southeast Asian. Even though his family is from Tamil Nadu in India, they migrated to Malaysia, so he is first-generation American through Malaysia, not from India." Another artist in the show is Indo-Caribbean.

Thiagarajan is always educating on behalf of the artists, which will help everyone who sees the work realize and appreciate once again, the vast diversity of culture that has roots in South Asia.

Roots & Routes: Where Cultural Roots Meet Creative Journeys opens Friday, September 5, with an opening reception that evening from 6-9 p.m. at Englewood CityCenter, 901 Englewood Parkway, Unit 108. The show runs through October 5. For more information, see cosouthasianartists.com.