India, May 10 -- 1An art fair where you couldn't find a single work by women artists inspired you to create an Instagram page to showcase art by women, and enabled you to write The Story of Art Without Men. This persists. At a retrospective exhibition in January, for instance, I asked the curator about the erasure of women artists. Please contextualise why this remains the case. How good that you noticed and were able to call that out. I think that's what it's about. We have to constantly remind ourselves about representation, and not in a pity sense at all. It has to be a good, interesting work with a unique perspective. Textile can be great art. So can a piece of lace. A quilt can tell an incredible story, as can a marble sculpture. Greatness can come in so many different ways. Where I live, in London, you think about what is great art built on. It's the Royal Academy, which was opened in the 18th century, and that very much established hierarchies in art. But who had access to all that? Men! It was almost built to kind of keep the women out. So, these hierarchies that have been built on what's great, they're so boring because if you're not seeing art by a wide range of people, then you're not seeing society as a whole. And you're also missing out on great art. 2 Though it's crucial to do away with labels, we still do not have a level playing field. At the same time, grants are given based on an individual's identity on the margins. So, labels present a unique conundrum. How do you reconcile this? It's like, would I want to be seen as a woman writer? Or would I want to be seen as a writer? When I say "a woman writer", to me, it doesn't mean anything derogatory or negative. Whereas in history, it was a derogatory thing. We're seeing this debate because of what we've witnessed. I talk about this, especially in the abstract expressionism chapter of the book: that these women would abhor the idea of me putting them in this book because they were told that being a woman was a bad thing. But it's not anything less. Everyone has to own their identity. I own, for one, being a woman writer, but I also own being a writer. I don't want to be a token of sorts. What I mean by doing away with labels is that we shouldn't reduce this to a trend. We have to own all our identities but we must also disrupt, which is why I wrote this book. We need more books to spotlight works by women, nonbinary and trans artists, because they've not been given the space. The statistics prove that. In London, only 1% of the National Gallery is works by women artists, so there's a lot of work to be done. 3You've said this book is still not a definitive history of art. What's left to be uncovered? I've never been to Japan. Or China. Or certain places in the African continent. Also, I want to go back to a few places, for example, Brazil. That doesn't mean I'm not writing about them. I'm writing about tonnes of Japanese artists, but it would have been great to see them within their context. There's always more to be exhumed....