Shahzia Sikander
Bhabah Homi, Kissane Sean, Heartney Eleanor, Shahzia Sikander, Dublin, Irish Museum of Modern Art, 2007
→Sikander Shahzia, Shahzia, My Life as an Artist, New York, Museum of Modern Art, 2018
Shahzia Sikander, The Renaissance Society, Chicago, 8 March – 19 April 1998
→Shahzia Sikander, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 27 November 2007 – 17 February 2008
→Shahzia Sikander: Disruption as Rapture, Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, 12 October 2019 – 5 January 2020
Myths, Memories and Miniatures: The Art of Shahzia Sikander
Pakistani painter and videographer.
Shahzia Sikander is one of the best-known contemporary Pakistani artists. She studied traditional miniature painting at the National College of Arts in Lahore before studying at the United States, at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence. Since the 1990s, through painting films, murals and animated cartoons, she has been central to the recontextualization of Indo-Persian miniature painting by combining historical iconography, mythology and traditional techniques with her own contemporary style. The narrative and images of her works, populated with characters and scenes, refer to the tensions between Islam, Hinduism and Christianity, as well as politics, intimate stories and sexuality.
She explores, often polemically, the position of Muslim women in the modern world and challenges the Western cliché of Islam as the sole cause of terrorism and female oppression. S. Sikander has had several retrospective exhibitions, notably at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (2007) and the San Francisco Art Institute (2011). She has also participated in several biennials (Taipei, 2006; Venice, 2005; Istanbul, 2003).
© Éditions des femmes – Antoinette Fouque, 2013
© Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions, 2020
