Present-day India, however, has the advantage of women entering modernity, while at the same time, there is a large pool of traditional practitioners to be inspired by. A number of Indian women artists are, of course, attracted by this live folk foundation of our visual expression. And indeed, most of the women artists in this exhibition at Galerie Ganesha are, in fact, inspired by rural life, the women who live it and their styles of expression. The range is enormous, from Uma Bardhan's tempera on silk, to Shiela Sabharwal's wash-paintings of the Bengal style, to Pushpa Chitrak's realistic oils on canvasand Shakila's world famous collages.

Surjit Akre has evolved her own expression involving light, shade and textured surfaces, Arpana Caur collaborates with the folk artist Pande, while Jayashree Burman and Sarla Chandra fill the space with women's dreams and a world that is folk and modern at the same time.

The show radiates hope. It reflects opportunity for the vegetable seller from Bangladesh, Shakila, shares the gallery space with Kamla Deuskar, who has generations of eminent artists among her ancestors. But then one is reminded that this is opportunity in a very narrow framework indeed and what appears to be beautiful on canvas, may involve a lot of pain in life. And Indian women's lives reflect both the opportunities of modern life as well as the drudgery it involves in a Third World context. But then it also gives you the art it does.

--Suneet Chopra