International Artist-In-Residence
New Works 01.1

Shahzia Sikander

New York, NY

March 15–May 13, 2001

about the artist

Shahzia Sikander was born in Lahore, Pakistan in 1969. She received her B.F.A. from the National College of Arts, Lahore and an M.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design. After participating in the CORE Program of the Glassell School of Art at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, TX, her work was included in the 1997 Whitney Biennial. Solo exhibitions of her work have been held at Deitch Projects, New York, NY (1997), The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, IL (1998); The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO (1998); the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC (1999); Whitney Museum of American Art at Philip Morris, New York, NY (2000). Group exhibitions include Out of India: Contemporary Art of the South Asian Diaspora at the Queens Museum of Art, Flushing, NY; Pop Surrealism at the Aldrich Museum, Ridgefield, CT (1999); Negotiating Small Truths at the Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas at Austin, TX (1999); and The American Century: Art & Culture 1900-2000 at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (2000). In 1997 she was awarded a Louis Comfort Tiffany Award and is currently a finalist for the National Gallery of Canada’s Millenium Prize.

Shahzia Sikander reflects the complexities of cultural identity and gender in her work. Her drawings and site-specific installations experiment with the highly stylized and image-oriented genre of Indian and Persian miniature painting.

Shahzia Sikander was selected for her ArtPace residency by the March 1998 panel consisting of Dan Cameron, Annette DiMeo Carlozzi, Amada Cruz, Kellie Jones, Hans-Ulrich Obrist, and Nancy Rubins.

about the project

Shahzia Sikander’s re-examination of the genre of Indo-Persian miniature paintings and recontext-ualization of Indian and Pakistani imagery continues at ArtPace. For her residency, she presents a new work on paper and the result of her first experiments with digital video.

In the middle of the darkened gallery are two parallel walls that form a corridor, each with a glowing work of art. One is a new drawing by Sikander, a miniature with figuration and abstraction. Under a precise theatrical light, the illustration shines, highlighting its intimate, precious scale.

Opposite it is a small rear-projected screen displaying an animated montage of digital reproductions of the artist’s previous work. Silently fading into each other, the pictures create layers of Sikander’s visual vocabulary. Decorative surfaces dissolve into figure studies of a dancer; transparent paper morphs into detailed drawings of architectural details.

Sikander’s work has consistently explored how montage and collage can represent multiple facets of cultural identity. Whether juxtaposing Hindu and Muslim traditions or highlighting women’s physical strengths, the artist is keenly interested in how image and content flow into one another. In her first foray with moving images, Sikander examines the medium itself, exploiting video’s fluid nature to create an animated, non-linear space. Despite its small scale, this new work relates specifically to the artist’s previous room-sized installation work, where wall paintings are painted over and drawings on tissue reveal and conceal images and surface.

Sikander’s precise technique and engaging iconography lend themselves to examinations of power and control. The artist looks to the tensions between history and modernity, between East and West. Through Sikander’s work, the viewer looks to the future while revisiting the past.

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