Shahzia Sikander

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Shahzia Sikander

Artist's Name:

Shahzia Sikander

Preferred medium:

painting

birth year:

1969

Nationality:

City:

New York

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The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum presented Shahzia Sikander: Nemesis, an exhibition of recent animations, drawings, and a site-specific installation by the Pakistan-born artist from September 19 through January 2, 2005. Nemesis is a traveling exhibition in two parts, organized by Aldrich associate curator Jessica Hough in collaboration with curator Ian Berry of The Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College. This exhibition was made possible in part by the Islamic World Arts Initiative, a program of Arts International generously supported by the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art. The Aldrich exhibition unveiled new works completed during the summer of 2004. An opening reception was held at the Museum on September 19, 2004,. Indian dancer and Yoga practitioner, Sharmila Desai, performed at the opening reception for the exhibition. Desai and Sikander have collaborated in various creative capacities over the past few years. Born in the multicultural city of Lahore, Pakistan, Sikander grew up equally conversant with international pop culture and her country's heritage of miniature painting, which originated as a court tradition for illustrating royal manuscripts and reached its height during the Mughal Empire (1526-1857), when Muslim rulers reigned over predominantly Hindu India. By Sikander's day, cliché miniature images were "abundant as gift items everywhere, saturating the tourist market," she recalls. "My initial feeling was that it was kitsch, but I saw the potential of subversion." Today, Sikander freely mingles Hindu and Muslim painting techniques with contemporary Western elements, from American painting and pop culture to images of war, supermodels, and fairy tales. Sikander's innovative blend of ancient and contemporary themes were evident in the new works on view at The Aldrich. Co-curator Jessica Hough describes the uniqueness of Sikander's style: "While Sikander is totally engaged with the tradition of miniature painting, her work is only in part about looking back. She has developed numerous ways to play off this source material, producing work which is unmistakably contemporary." Animation: A highlight of the exhibition was the debut of an animation that focused on landscape, an essential aspect of miniature painting that is traditionally secondary to the action or figures in the composition. In this video, which was projected in large-scale, the landscape is not the backdrop for the action, but rather provides the action. Sikander has created imagery inspired both by nature and the stylized landscape of the miniature. The trees, hills, root systems, rivers, and mountain ranges come to life and command the content of the drama. The animation was accompanied by a soundtrack that echoes and enhances the drama unfolding visually. Drawings: The exhibition also included a suite of graphite drawings, fifty in total, one to be titled 51 Ways of Looking. These highly detailed line drawings, similar to sketches for miniature paintings, continued the tradition in a more measured format. The drawings provided a monochrome contrast to the opulent color of the animation and complex layering of the installation work. Installation; Sikander created a site-specific wall installation on the Museum's new 16-square-foot "art wall" in the atrium. The installation was a spontaneous reaction to the character of the space and content of her new suite of drawings and wasl created on-site over a period of ten days. Sikander has executed many wall drawings over the past six years sometimes using only paint an dother times utilizing squares of painted yellow tissue paper that are pinned to the wall. (Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum)

important exhibitions from Shahzia Sikander

Exhibition	Location	City	Country	Date
Shahzia Sikander: The exploding company man and other abstractions	San Francisco Art Institute - SFAI	San Francisco	US	22.04.2011

51. Biennale Venedig 2005 "The Experience of Art"	Biennale Venedig	Venedig	IT	12.06.2005

Shahzia Sikander	Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney	Sydney	AS	27.11.2007

Future Pass - From Asia to the World	Biennale Venedig	Venedig	IT	04.06.2011

Shahzia Sikander	Miami Art Museum - MAM	Miami	US	28.10.2005

2006 Taipei Biennial: Dirty Yoga	Taipei Biennale	Taipeh	CN	04.11.2006

Shahzia Sikander	Para/Site, Hongkong	Hongkong	CN	02.09.2009

Shahzia Sikander	Irish Museum of Modern Art - IMMA	Dublin	IR	28.03.2007

Tokyo Art Meeting Transformation	Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokio (MOT)	Tokio	JP	29.10.2010

Shahzia Sikander	Fabric Workshop and Museum	Philadelphia	US	08.04.2006