Show ! Girls bring together the works of three young women artists. The show wishes to explore the passions, dreams and day to day preoccupations portrayed through the imagery of a new generation of Indian female artists. 

Show ! Girls is perhaps a teasing title, it flirts with preconceptions of femininity as well as with the emerging Indian consumer society and its publicity machine. Yet the exhibition wishes to defy stereotypical thought and the marketing branding system and quite on the contrary create space for personal and intimate artistic voices. The Strand Art Room through this exhibition wishes to pay tribute to three young yet mature minds and provide a platform in which three multifaceted yet distinct spirits can emerge. 

Preeti Agrawal, Riya Chatterjee and Nibha Sikander went to the same art school in Baroda. Despite their similar educational background, their works deeply differentiate due to their varied perception on art, their diverse working mediums and modes of expression and their individual apprehension of their self and their femininity. In her expressive woodcut prints, Preeti explores her internal world fearlessly, fusing between poetic imagery and elements from daily life. Her colorful and sensitive works expose a gentle yet dark world, a source for both comfort and threat; In her works, Nibha describes the global yet Indian consumer behavior through the imagery of feminine undergarments as being representative of “The Woman”.  With fascination and irony she looks upon the undergarment as a seductive yet empty metaphor for femininity; In her sewn works Riya seams together elements from her private world with elements that represent \"Femininity\" or what is typically expected of a woman by society. Here too questions of predetermined social roles and an individual artistic and feminine voice arise to create a complex and multilayered position.  

The Strand Art Room wishes to reinforce these three artists with energy to match their spirits and to create for them an open space for their visions, their dreams and their aspirations.

Anne Maniglier & Rukshaan Krishna 
November 2009