Shahzia Sikander

Shahzia Sikander…

is a Pakistani-American contemporary artist who works in various art mediums including; drawing, painting, printmaking, animation, large-scale installation, performance and video, and more. Sikander is best known for her Indian and Persian miniature painting, which is a highly stylized and disciplined traditional style. Her art holds a personal context and history, and blends Eastern and Western ideas that are both highly skilled and philosophical as well as personally expressive. Sikander has helped to elevate miniature painting into a form of contemporary art.

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Major themes:

Hierarchies, stereotypes, power, religion, ritual, culture, identity,perception

 

Reflection:

Upon watching the videos at the https://art21.org/artist/shahzia-sikander/ website, my first impression of the artist is sincerely dedicated she is to learning her craft and preparing for her art making.  Her art is largely technique driven, disciplined, precise, clean, methodical and ritualistic. In spite of this, she is able to infuse her work with a deeply personal meaning, drawn from her memories. She is taking a traditional art form and juxtaposing it with a subversion of her heritage. She is spreading a message to not underestimate “what’s behind the veil.” Although her work has evolved and changed into large scale installations to animation, she always comes back to her miniature painting, which she describes as echoing the idea of “divine circles", where you experience something and come back to where you started.

Her work is also about transformation and layered narrative. She has a concept or a technique, and builds upon it in both form and story, and her animation speaks to this idea of moving from one place to another without ever truly leaving what is at the core. To me that is rooted in her identity, that she has many influences from her past and upbringing, but has had experiences that have changed her and turned a more critical eye on her life and society in general, and this is communicated through her art.

Lesson Plan Inspired by Shahzia Sikander:

A possible lesson idea would be to use layering, either through the act of drawing and then creating layered forms on top of those to make a three dimensional art piece, or through digital manipulation or animation, similar to what Sikander has done. The concept behind the lesson would be to take a narrative of your own life experience or heritage and look at it with a critical eye, or show how things have changed in the context of the student’s own life.

Questions:

  • What materials does Shahzia Sikander use?

  • Why do you think the artist chose these particular materials?

  • How would you interpret the scenes she creates?

  • Do you think the narratives can interpreted in more than one way?

  • How do you feel the artists use of her traditional media and heritage contributes to the meaning? 

  • How can transformation be visually represented?