Press release: Shahzia Sikander

03.19.01

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.

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.

445 North Main Avenue San Antonio TX 78205 t 210 212 4900 f 210 212 4990 www.artpace.org