Artist's Talk Shahzia Sikander

Shahzia Sikander transports the stylized and disciplined vocabulary of Indian and Persian miniature painting into the realm of contemporary art.

Now based in New York City, the artist explores boundaries imposed by time, gender, religion, and culture while commenting on lived experience, art history, and popular culture. Join us to hear this fascinating artist, recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 2006, discuss her work. Born in Pakistan, Sikander was educated as an undergraduate at the National College of Arts in Lahore and received her M.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1995. She works in a variety of formats, including drawings, paintings, murals, site-specific installation, performance, and video animation. Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C., and at the Istanbul Biennale, Venice Biennale, and many other international venues. In 2004, Newsweek identified her as one of the most important South Asians transforming the American cultural landscape. She was designated a "Young Global Leader" by the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in 2006.

Sikander has received many honors for her work, including the National Medal of Honor from the government of Pakistan and awards from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation and the Joan Mitchell Foundation. Her work is in the permanent collections of museums across the world, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, and the Guggenheim in New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the Los Angeles County Museum and Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, among others.

image credit
In collaboration with The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia
The Illustrated Page Series (title)
2005-6
One of three unique works on paper (gouache hand painting, gold leaf, silkscreened pigment)
117 x 75 inches framed
Courtesy Sikkema Jenkins and Co., NYC