Tuesday, December 3rd, 7pm
@ the Asian American Writers’ Workshop
110-112 West 27th Street, Suite 600
New York, NY 10001
SAWCC presents a slide slam with six visual artists working across genres to produce meditative works on artistic process and visual tactility. Spanning drawings, paintings, videos and animation, the artist presentations will be followed by a moderated discussion and audience Q & A.
Artists:  Marcy Chevali, Nandini Chirimar,  Ruby Chishti, Roya Farassat, Samanta Batra Mehta, Negin Sharifzadeh
Marcy Chevali is a visual artist with an MFA from the Maine College of Art; she has been based in New York City since 2008. The recipient of a 2011 Gallery Aferro Studio Residency, Chevali has shown work in galleries and artists’ spaces in the city, including Taubman Museum of Art, Queens Museum of Art, Macy Gallery at Columbia University, Aicon Gallery, AC Institute, The Gallery of Contemporary Art at Sacred Heart University and with organizations such as Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, Peculiar Works Projects, and 4heads. She has served on the board of directors for the South Asian Women’s Creative Collective since 2011.
Nandini Chirimar grew up in Jaipur, India, and started studying art at College of Art, New Delhi. She was awarded a full scholarship by Cornell University to pursue her undergraduate education, so came to the USA in 1987 to complete her BFA in Drawing and Painting from Cornell. She went on to study art with Grace Hartigan at the Hoffberger School of Painting, Maryland Institute College of Art, where she did her MFA in Painting. She was also awarded a residency at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, which she attended in the summer of 1991. In addition, Nandini learned viscosity printing from Arun Bose and spent four years in Japan studying woodblock printing with Taika Kinoshita. She is currently exploring printmaking techniques with Vijay Kumar at the Manhattan Graphics Center, New York. Nandini has shown her work many international venues, including Allen Gallery, New York; Queens Museum of Art, New York; Ganges Art Gallery, Kolkata; Centre for International Modern Art (CIMA), Kolkata; Exhibit 320 Gallery, New Delhi; Ono Gallery, Tokyo; CWAJ Print Shows, Tokyo; Twelve Gates Gallery, Philadelphia; Taubman Art Museum, Virginia; AHAF Fair, Korea; SLICK II Fair, Paris; India Art Fair, New Delhi and in Erasing Borders Traveling Exhibitions.
Ruby Chishti was born in Jhang Pakistan. Over the last 13 years, she has produced a series of lyrical sculptures and installations that touch on such issues as gender politics, universal theme of love, loss and of being human. Drawing on her domestic experiences as well as a Pakistani émigré in the US, the universal themes of identity, migration and memory in her work have garnered a huge public attention.
Solo exhibitions include Nest of memories at Vermont studio center, In the vast valley of my heart there is a place…, Green Cardamom gallery London, Placed displaced, misplaced at Rohtas gallery Lahore, There is no hero, Canvas gallery, Karachi. Her work has been exhibited at Art Asia Miami, Arco Madrid spain , Art Hong Kong, India Art fair and Queens Museum. She has been showing internationally since 2000. Graduated from National College of Arts Lahore Pakistan, Ruby Chishti now lives and works in Brooklyn NY.
Roya Farassat
Born and raised in Iran, Farassat’s work has been largely influenced by a culture and tradition that she feels embraces a distorted sense of reality.As a result, Farassat’s work embodies a desire to break free from social and cultural constraints, and explore one’s inner self freely. Roya Farassat received her BFA in 1986 at Parsons School of Design in New York, and later from 2000-2001 studied sculpture at the Sculpture Center School. Her awards include, Makor/Steinhardt Center Artists-in-Residence Program(2006) and the Henry Street Settlement’s Workspace Residency(2007). She was nominated for London’s Magic of Persia Contemporary Art Prize in 2009 and the Jameel Prize in 2012.  Roya Farassat’s work has been included in numerous curated group shows in United States, including The Queens Museum, The Taubman Museum, Fort Lewis College, Rogue Community College, Syracuse University, The College of New Jersey, Queens College Art Center, Manhattanville College, as well as abroad, in Kuwait and Dubai. In 2011, her solo exhibition, ” A Mirror Has Two Faces”, was exhibited at Leila Heller Gallery in New York.
Samanta Batra Mehta was born in New Delhi, India in 1975 and lives in New York, USA. Her work has been exhibited at various international venues including at the Queens Museum of the Arts, the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts and Aicon Gallery in New York, the Hunterdon Museum and the Visual Arts Center in New Jersey, Gallery BMB and Bodhi Art Gallery in Bombay. In 2010 she was invited by Galerie LMD, Paris to exhibit her work and make a 24 foot long site-specific mural at the Salon Du Dessin Contemporain, held at the Carrousel du Louvre in Paris. She was invited to exhibit her work at Art Stage, Singapore in 2011 and at the India Art Fair, New Delhi in 2011 and 2012 with Shrine Empire Gallery, New Delhi.
Negin Sharifzadeh, born in Tehran, Iran, is a multi-disciplinary artist, performer and filmmaker based in New York. Growing up in one of the world’s most historically and socially complex regions in the wake of revolution, she is fascinated by the mechanisms and interplay of different natural, emotional, and political systems. Her work explores how these systems are composed; how information, energy and material are codified within them; and how bodies are impacted by and interact with them. She has explored these themes through multiple mediums including sculpture, performance, installations, and increasingly combining all of these mediums in stop-motion animation.