Shahzia Sikander

Shahzia Sikander

Exhibition: Mar 15 – May 13, 2001


Shahzia Sikander’s re-examination of the genre of Indo-Persian miniature paintings and recontextualization 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.

Artist

Shahzia Sikander

New York, New York, USA

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.

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Curators

Amada Cruz

Los Angeles, CA
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Kellie Jones

New York, NY
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Nancy Rubins

Topanga, California, USA

Born in 1952 in Naples, Texas, Californian Nancy Rubins received her MFA from the University of California, Davis. She has had numerous solo exhibitions, including shows at Paul Kasmin Gallery, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Venice Biennale Aperto. Rubins’ work was included in the 1995 Whitney Biennial and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles’ Helter Skelter exhibit in 1992. Rubins teaches at the University of California, Los Angeles’ Art Department. She has received grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Tiffany Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

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Annette DiMeo Carlozzi

Austin, TX

Independent curator Annette DiMeo Carlozzi has built an expansive practice across the US as a curator of modern and contemporary art, focusing on ideas and experiences, artists and audiences. Raised in Boston and trained at the Walker Art Center, she has served in a variety of foundational roles: as the first curator at Laguna Gloria Art Museum (now The Contemporary Austin); executive director of the Aspen Art Museum and the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans; Visual Arts Producer for the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta; and in multiple positions—ranging from founding modern and contemporary curator to Deputy Director for Art and Programs to Curator at Large—at the Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas at Austin. Committed to expanding the canon, she has created notable exhibitions (Luis Jiménez, Paul Chan, Michael Smith, Deborah Hay, Negotiating Small TruthsAmerica/AmericasDesire), produced important commissions (Nancy Holt, Siah Armajani, Betye Saar, Vito Acconci, Byron Kim, Teresita Fernández), and acquired major works by a wide range of international artists. Carlozzi has had a long relationship with Artpace, having served as an early advisor, artist interviewer, and program panelist, member of the 1998 artist selection panel and 2001–03 Board of Visitors. In 2015 she curated Immersed from Linda Pace’s art collection, now called Ruby City.

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Dan Cameron

Newport Beach, California

From 2012 to 2015 he was Chief Curator at the Orange County Museum of Art in Newport Beach, California. In 2006, Dan Cameron founded the Biennial Prospect New Orleans, where he worked at until 2011. From 1995 to 2005 he was Senior Curator at the New Museum, New York, where he developed numerous group exhibitions, such as East Village USA and Living inside the Grid, and several individual shows dedicated to the artists Martin Wong, William Kentridge, Carolee Schneemann, Carroll Dunham, Doris Salcedo, José Antonio Hernández Diez, among others.
As independent curator he has organized many exhibitions that brought him international attention, such as El arte y su doble (Fundación Caixa, Madrid, 1987); El jardín salvaje (Fundación Caixa, Barcelona, 1991); Cocido y crudo (Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, 1995), among many others. In 2003, he was the Artistic Director of the 8th Istanbul Biennial, and in 2006, Co-curator of the 5th Taipei Biennial.
He has published hundreds of texts in books, catalogues and magazines, and has given numerous talks and conferences at museums and universities around the world, also carrying out an important teaching activity in New York.

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Hans Ulrich Obrist

London, England

Hans Ulrich-Obrist is the Co-Director of Exhibitions and Programs and Director of International Projects at the Serpentine Gallery in London, positions created for Ulrich-Obrist in April 2006. As a curator at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France since 2000, among many other exhibitions he organized solo shows with Jonas Mekas (2003), Anri Sala (2004), and Cerith Wyn Evans (2006). Before this position Ulrich-Obrist was an independent curator for a decade, organizing the group show Take Me I’m Yours at the Serpentine (1995) and Retrace Your Steps: Remember at the John Soane Museum (1999), also in London, England. Ulrich-Obrist was a panelist in 1998 for the 1999-2000 year of artists, and was invited to be a speaker at the 2003 symposium, but was unable to come due to illness.
Photo by Dominik Gigler

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