Context, or lack thereof, disjoints "India: New Installations Part II," an exhibition of work by two contemporary Indian artists and a media arts collective, also from India, at the Mattress Factory on the North Side.

I wanted to see something exotic, colorful; infused with curry, or at worst a shade of colonialism ("post-" or otherwise). Instead, the three installations on the third and fourth floors appear to have the curated and specific intent of boring the viewer.

Anita Dube (Indian, born 1958) rehashes the middle-aged woman cum Pottery Barn aesthetic crystallized by such American artists as Ann Hamilton. This aesthetic usually involves candles, gauze or muslin, often dried wheat, resin, fur (or human hair), old books and broken furniture. Gallery texts usually mention "process" and simplify critiques of capitalism.

Dube's installation comprises a series of constructed objects, each connected to a word beginning with the letter "W." Novelty-sized (2-foot high) white wax candle letters spell out the word "WOMAN." A Plexiglas bench structure is filled with salt and books, with the spines of the books connecting to spell "WISDOM." "Everything is white because I didn't want colors to interfere with the conceptual process," Dube explains in a gallery text.

Personally, if I were from an impoverished Third World country whose sectarian religious and ethnic violence has historically been fueled by Western -- predominantly Anglo -- nations, I would avoid making work that is all "WHITE."

Hema Upadhyay (Indian, born 1972) delves into materials and issues of violence. Matches are intricately crafted into large chandelier shapes in the main gallery space. In an annex room, a "Tom and Jerry" cartoon is projected onto a pile of matchboxes. The artist explains that the matches (and cartoon) symbolize the flammable quality of violence. The chandelier symbolizes wealth and relates to possession.

Problematic is Upadhyay's assumption that the artist's reading of the materials (matches, "Tom and Jerry," chandeliers) will correlate to the viewer's interpretation of the same materials and symbols. For me, it does not, and I felt at first confused and ultimately disheartened by what gets lost in translation. Again, "India" perplexes by regionalizing an artist who, according to the gallery text, specifically states a universal intent in communicating his work.

Raqs Media Collective (Jeebesh Bagchi, Indian, born 1965; Monica Narula, Indian, born 1969; Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Indian, born 1968) presents a multimedia installation titled "Time Book." Unfortunately -- as with Upadhyay's work -- a gallery text is necessary to decode disjointed elements arranged in the named contemporary art installation.

R.M.C. pays homage to Pittsburgh's "Rivers of Steel Heritage Area" in Homestead. Objects in the installation include: factory clocks with their digits set at "1-9-8-6" (the year many of the factories closed); a suspended, stainless steel sheet silk-screened with an orange image of a sculpture by a steelworker; video images taken from inside an abandoned steel mill; and archival images of Carrie Furnace and Homestead Works.

Steel heritage always wins with Pittsburghers, no doubt. But the larger concern posed by the R.M.C. installation is shared with all of "India: New Installations Part II:" Why were these artists imported from India to regurgitate work we are already, for better or worse, familiar with?

When we look at the intent of the larger exhibition, in relationship to institutional funding in Pittsburgh, we find an ill-informed curator and director who found nothing "New," as the exhibition title suggests, or even contemporary, but instead brought back mediocrity labeled with the exotic misnomer "India."

The title "India" fulfills a multicultural prerequisite for contemporary arts funding, the original intent of which, like that of the Mattress Factory itself, was supportive of cultural and aesthetic change decades ago but now serves as a linguistic barrier excluding actual contemporary ideas of cultural and aesthetic change.

"India" continues through Jan. 20 at 500 Sampsonia Way. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday. Admission is $9, seniors $7, students and children $6, children under 6 free, half off on Thursdays. For information, call 412-231-3169 or visit www.mattress.org.