IN THE SPAN OF ONE YEAR, NEW YORK CITY HAS HOSTED THREE MAJOR AND DIVERSELY premised exhibitions on art and feminism - Global Feminisms at the Brooklyn Museum from March 23rd to July 1st, 2007; WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution at P.S.1 MoMA from 17th February to May 12th, 2008; and Making it Together at the Bronx Museum of Art from March 2nd to August 4th, 2008. Clearly, these topics still generate insightful conversations and The South Asian Women's Creative Collective (SAWCC) has carried its own unique weight within their combined histories.

On March 7, 1997, founder Jaishri Abichandani met with fourteen others and the South Asian Women's Creative Collective (SAWCC) was conceived. Shortly after, they held their first monthly meeting; and "while none of the original fourteen showed up, they all sent women," remembers Abichandani. "The collective has since grown to over 1,100 strong on the listserv."

Before SAWCC, there had been quite a few progressive South Asian collectives but most of them were activist in nature - i.e. SALGA, Sakhi and Manavi. There was a need for a more exclusively defined space for South Asian women who were creatively inclined. SAWCC emerged at a time when many academics and writers were engaged in discussions about race and gender. Current board member and artist Swati Khurana recalls the major wave of Indophilia that lashed New York in the late '90s. "Everyone in St. Mark's Square could be seen sporting a bindi. And on stage, the likes of Madonna, Cyndi Lauper and Mary J. Blige were performing in saris and salwar kameezes." From a South Asian standpoint, however, there was something quite Orientalist about this act of rediscovery. For all the attention Indian culture was receiving, there was scant visibility of South Asians. "This was before Monsoon Wedding, Harold and Kumar or the Indian doctor on ER." Khurana continues. With respect to the art world, only a few South Asian artists like Shahzia Sikander had entered the circuit of biennales and the volume of critical writing on Contemporary ­ South Asian Art was quite low.