Shahzia Sikander
| Shahzia Sikander | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1969 (age 47–48) Lahore, Pakistan |
| Nationality | Pakistan |
| Alma mater | National College of Arts Lahore, Rhode Island School of Design |
| Known for | Painting, digital animation, performance art, installation art, contemporary art |
| Awards | MacArthur Fellowship |
| Website | http://www.shahziasikander.com/ |
Shahzia Sikander (born 1969, in Lahore, Pakistan) is a Pakistani artist who works in drawing, painting, animation, large-scale installation, performance and video, on an international stage.
Sikander has held solo exhibitions throughout the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Ireland, Australia and Hong Kong. She has had solo exhibitions at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (1999/2000) and at the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago (1998). Her work has been shown in group exhibitions at the Whitney Museum (1999/2000 and 1999), at the Third Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Brisbane, Australia (1999), and at the Ludwig Museum, Cologne, Germany (1999). Sikander currently resides in New York City although her artistic practice continues to move easily between the borders and boundaries, out of which shifting identities and transnational artists are created.
Sikander studied at The National College of Arts Lahore in Pakistan, where she was taught the traditional discipline of Indo-Persian miniature painting. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1991. Sikander moved to the United States and attended the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), earning a Master of Fine Arts in Painting and Printmaking in 1995.
“Initially I explored the tension between illustration and fine art when I first encountered miniature painting in my late teens. Championing the formal aspects of the Indo-Persian miniature-painting genre has often been at the core of my practice.” - Shahzia Sikander
As an undergraduate student in Lahore, Shahzia Sikander studied the techniques of Persian and Mughal miniature painting, often integrating traditional forms of Mughal (Islamic) and Rajput (Hindu) styles and culture. The traditional form of miniature painting requires equal measures of discipline, gesture and expression in order to execute a careful layering of color and detail. Compositionally, miniature paintings exhibit an extensive display of colorful imagery including, human forms, animals, patterns, shapes, dots and connecting lines. Miniature paintings often engage in contextual complexities such as, religious narrative, scenes of battles and court life. Sikander has integrated the techniques and forms of traditional miniature painting, relying on the layering of images and metaphor to drive her work. Her forms and figures exhibit a quality of continual morphing as transparent imagery is layered, providing a complexity with endless shifts in perception. Sikander’s complex compositions “dismantle hierarchical assumptions and subverts the very notion of a singular, fixed identity of figures and forms.” The increasing approach of continual morphing explains Sikander’s relationship to an ever-changing world where opposing societies coalescently interact.
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