At Christmas, artist Jaideep Mehrotra and wife, Seema, were nowhere to be seen in Mumbai, as they had taken their daughters on a holiday abroad to celebrate the success of his exhibition at the 1 x 1 Art Space in Dubai. This was his second solo show outside India, the first one being a year ago in the Art House at the Asian Civilisation Museums in Singapore...and he is still quite excited. "The locals are intrigued by the sudden fondness for Indian contemporary art by Indian expatriates living around them...and are also venturing to visit such exhibitions," he observes. "I have given talks to students and art lovers and these have elicited positive responses." While he is just beginning to enjoy the thrill of India being the current rage in "countries that house large pockets of Indian residents", Jitish Kallat had his first solo show abroad at the Bose Pacia Modern, New York, in 1999, while Atul Dodiya's was held at The Fine Art Resource, Berlin, in 2001.

"This phenomenon began 10 years ago, thanks to a range of mid-career artists who are changing perceptions of Indian art abroad," declares Kallat, who has participated in key exhibitions abroad like the Innenseite, Kassel, Germany, way back in 1997. However, he grants that the level of acceleration is now much more. "The core of expansion has widened and there is greater curatorial and critical interest," he adds, insisting that a lot of the intrigue about this 'new, old' country stems from the robust nature of Indian art - which has become 'internally tuned and self-sustained'. While Atul Dodiya echoes his viewpoint when he attributes the widespread interest even from countries like Japan, South Korea and China to the fact that contemporary Indian art is "rooted within the country", he believes that the economic situation plays a major role. "When the economy is booming, people all over the world are interested in whatever the country is doing."

As Peter Nagy, curator and gallerist, Nature Morte, puts it: "I think it follows the international interest in English language literature from India and the growing worldwide popularity of Indian cuisine." He has detected an immense interest in Indian contemporary art coming from museums, collectors and private galleries in Western Europe - much more than that coming from the United States, with other parts of Asia (Australia, Japan, Korea, China) being second to Western Europe. "Many Europeans travel to India and European governments and businesses are actively pursuing financial collaborations with India," he explains. "This leads to an increased awareness of culture in general. Besides, Europeans are much more progressive and enlightened about the role culture can play in improving economic and diplomatic relations."

Independent curator, Ranjit Hoskote, offers two main reasons for the wave of artists choosing to show their work abroad: "First, many established and emerging Indian artists are working with concepts and media that cannot yet be supported by the available infrastructure in India; for instance, new media artists working with projection, video, broadband and virtual reality environments require programming skills that are more readily available in specialised centres in Europe or North America." He adds, "Secondly, many of our artists are now part of a global circuit of art, which is based on the periodic annuals, biennials, triennials and other large-scale international exhibitions (like the Documenta in Kassel, the Venice Biennale, the Armory Show, the Gwangju Biennale, Art Basel in Basel and Miami) - so it is important that they be seen in these contexts, if their work is to be received in the wider sphere of viewers/collectors outside Indian and NRI circles."

Kolkata-based artist, Mithu Sen, who has spent most of the last year globetrotting to display her work abroad, was part of a three-artist show at Galeria do Goethe Institut in Brazil in November 2006. She admits that sometimes elements like nostalgia, sentimentality, identity crisis, even the developing economy, play a role in the sale of works...yet she would rather not differentiate between NRI buyers and others. "In the end, art lovers love art and collect it...but the galleries should do a little homework and create a more global buyer circle by instilling faith in what they are showing," she recommends. Some galleries abroad are astute enough to cultivate a new audience apart from the usual suspects of nostalgic NRIs, Indophiles and Orientalists by accompanying their shows with illuminating discourses and slide lectures that throw light on the works displayed.

It is through the intercession of private galleries like Bose Pacia (that opened in New York in 1994 to exclusively exhibit Indian contemporary art) and art ambassadors like Nagy that our artists command a telling presence on the international scene. Nagy has worked with the Bose Pacia Gallery since 1999 to promote Indian contemporary art in New York. In 2005, he was part of a larger team that put together a significant collection for the Venice Biennale...called Icon: India Contemporary. His gallery, Nature Morte, has also presented two shows with galleries in Sydney (1999 and 2003), with a third coming up this month. Besides, they have organised an exhibition of works by Ravinder Reddy which was seen at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and Deitch Projects Gallery in New York in 2001. Along with Bose Pacia, they are taking Indian art to international art fairs such as The Armory Show in New York (2005, 2006, 2007); Art Basel and Art Basel/Miami Beach (2006), and FIAC, Paris (2006).

Taking Indian art overseas no doubt means increased business for the art galleries, but does it spell more money as well? "Sometimes, prices are higher as shipment costs are involved. However, the buyer gets a wider choice at his/her doorstep - so it works out well," says Usha Gawde of Sakshi Gallery, which has presented solo shows of some of their artists in Hong Kong (Manjit Bawa), New York (Jehangir Sabavala), London (Manjit Bawa and Amit Ambalal) and Singapore (Rekha Rodwittiya), besides three group shows in Berlin in 2004. But there is another contributing factor to the price, besides the cost of transporting the works. "Commercial galleries in the US and Europe take a 50 per cent commission on sales. In India, galleries only take a 33 per cent commission. So, when we take Indian art out of India, we double the artists' price - but the artist is paid the same as when the work is sold within India," discloses Nagy. "Of course, the expenses of mounting exhibitions abroad are very high and this helps to cover our costs."

If the artists do not make more money out of such elaborate exercises, one is inclined to wonder if the colonial hangover has some part to play in their desire to present their work to an international audience. Baiju Parthan, who has shown abroad intermittently and will be part of a group show along with Hema Upadhyaya, Madhvi and Manu Parekh in Vienna this year, is not afraid to admit that it does. "The fact is, the core ideas that drive our contemporary art practice have come from the Western art historical tradition - which in a way presupposes the ideal informed audience to be somewhere in the Western hemisphere," he argues. "Today, we do have a rather unique contemporary art movement, but the urge to exhibit one's work in that supposedly ideal space across the seas still lingers. It is almost as though one gains a higher degree of legitimacy in one's practice through shows in the cities of the West like New York, London or Paris."

Sunil Padwal agrees that showing work abroad is a great way to weigh one's development as an artist. His first major solo show abroad was in Hong Kong in 2001, followed by an exhibition in New York last year. While he is not represented by any gallery and has still managed to taste international success, he feels that the artist is in a better position when backed by an Indian gallery affiliated to an international one. "The outcome of a show abroad depends on who is showing your work," he asserts. "A gallery of repute will ensure that you are on the international art map." He is looking forward to his forthcoming solo exhibition at the Gallery on Cork Street in London this March, and is quite confident that Neeraj Nair of Ad Fab (who is presenting the show along with a corporate bank) will ensure that his work is seen by the right people.

The question of whether all this frenetic activity on the international front has led to a change in the target audience is a major preoccupation with the media here. While Ranjana Steinruecke of Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke admits that if by audience we mean buyers, then yes...they are primarily Indians or NRIs. "To my mind, however, an audience is not defined only by buyers," she continues, pointing to the fact that during the show, The Artist Lives and Works, that she curated in 2005 at the House of World Cultures in Berlin, there were over 4000 visitors in two weeks...and 95 per cent of them were German. Parthan acknowledges that NRI buyers are very much part of the picture and without their support the initial steps that are necessary to gain a foothold in new territories would have been next to impossible. "But the actual target audience would be the contemporary art circle of the West - consisting of artists, curators, museums, historians, collectors and, of course, auction houses," he maintains.

Artists who have succeeded in attracting a considerable amount of attention from this target audience include: Subodh Gupta, Atul Dodiya, Jitish Kallat, Baiju Parthan, Shilpa Gupta, Bose Krishnamachari, Hema Upadhyaya, Nalini Malani and the RAQS Media Collective. Hoskote points out that "the power of such artists lies in their ability to refute all the stereotypes about India while producing compelling images and narratives that speak of India but also of the world and of the world inside the artist's head. Where foreign audiences expect Indian artists to report from an exotic culture, these artists demonstrate that their first loyalty is to the country of the imagination."

Considering that there are no boundaries to that Utopian nation, contemporary Indian artists are free to capture more territories overseas with their work while being nurtured and supported by the motherland. Hail the conquering heroes!