The two artists in this exhibition, Reena Kallat and Sara Rahbar, live on different continents, Asia and North America, or sometimes on the same one, namely Asia (India and Iran), from where their observations about the nature of power as it effects belonging informs their individual practices.

The work that Kallat has been producing can be seen as part of a growing realization in the picturing of the victims of post-global reality. The recent and sudden drop in status of many people from certain regions of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, who were dependent on patterns of mass migration for their economic survival, has come to provide a vivid portrayal of the victims of the contemporary haste to build and the shadows remaining in the reversal of this trend. Like a rudderless raft by the wayside of international abandon, these courageous souls, who had trawled their way through multitudes of notary agents and officialdom to win over the processes of bureaucracy, are now abandoned in a no-mans land. Here between economies and between national recessions, they exist virtually, on paper and by symbolic agreements that no longer can be afforded.

Sara Rahbar's Those expectations for sunshine is a series of tightly arranged material, which is highly suggestive in its mixed provenance, making the audience react instantly to its redolent references of today's regrets and future's fears.

Reena Kallat was born in New Delhi and studied at the Sir J.J. School of Art in Mumbai, the city where she lives and works. Reena has exhibited extensively in many major museums and galleries worldwide including the Chicago Cultural Centre; Mori Art Museum, Japan; the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea; Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai; Hangar Bicocca, Milan; ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany; The Helsinki City Art Museum; The Culturgest Museum, Lisbon, Portugal; the Shanghai Zendai Museum of Contemporary Art and the Henie Onstad Kunstcenter, Oslo, amongst others. She is represented by Nature Morte in New Delhi, Chemould Prescott Road in Mumbai and Primo Marella Gallery, Milan. She is currently exhibiting at the National Museum in Taiwan, the Saatchi Gallery, London, and SESC in, Sao Paolo, Brazil

Shaheen Merali is a writer and curator based in London and Berlin, where, from 2003-8, he was the Head of Exhibitions, Film and New Media at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt. In 2006, he was invited to be co-curator of the 6th Gwangju Biennale, Korea. Recent exhibitions in 2009 include The Dark Science of Five Continents, (BMB Gallery, Mumbai), The Promise of Loss (Kunsthalle Brot, Vienna and Arario Gallery, New York) and Indian Popular culture (and beyond): The Untold (the rise of) Schisms, at Alcala 31 in Madrid. Merali has edited several publications, including Far Near Distance, Contemporary Positions for Iranian Artists (2004); Spaces and Shadows, Contemporary Art from Southeast Asia and About Beauty (2005): New York-States of Mind and Re-Imagining Asia (Saqi Books 2007) and the seminal Everywhere is War (and rumours of war) for Bodhi, Mumbai, India. (2008) His essays on individual artists include Ahmed Alsoudani, Ramesch Daha, Shilpa Gupta, Reena Kallat, Jitish Kallat, Leena Kejriwal, Riyas Komu, Lisl Ponger, Prasad Raghavan, Sara Rahbar, Sumedh Rajendran, NN Rimzon and TV Santhosh.

For further information please contact the gallery at Andrea@stuxgallery.com and visit our website at www.stuxgallery.com

STEFAN STUX Gallery is located on 530 West 25th Street, New York, New York 10001

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