Shahzia Sikander
Since the early 1990s, Shahzia Sikander has been instrumental in the rediscovery, re-infusion, and recontextualization of Indo-Persian miniature painting. Trained as a miniaturist at the National College of Arts, Lahore, Sikander has pioneered an experimental approach to the anachronistic genre. Encompassing painting; drawing; animation; installation; video, and film Sikander’s multi- dimensional praxis radically rearticulates the miniaturist tradition by inserting new dialogue that is often subversive and polemical in nature. Working from a rich ‘mental archive of imagery’, Sikander’s visual vocabulary engages a multiplicity of themes including transformation as narrative, the exploration of disruption as a means to cultivate new associations, and issues concerning labour, scale and time.
Shahzia Sikander was born in 1969 in Lahore, Pakistan. She received her BFA from the National College of Arts, Lahore, Pakistan and an M.F.A from the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence. From January to June 2023 two new public sculptures on the theme of justice by Shahzia Sikander were featured in a major multimedia solo exhibition Havah…to breathe, air, life at Madison Square Park, New York City. Sikander will have a major mid-career survey show, Collective Behaviour, opening at Palazzo Soranzo Van Axel, Venice (2024) and travelling to Cincinnati Museum of Art, Ohio and Cleveland Museum of Art (2025).
Major solo exhibitions of Sikander’s work include: Collective Behaviour, Cincinnati Art Museum and Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio (2024); Loss, Longing, Belonging: Shahzia Sikander’s Khorfakkan Series, NYU Abu Dhabi institute, New York (2023); Radiant Dissonance, Sean Kelly, Los Angeles (2022); Extraordinary Realities, MFA, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2022); Morgan Library and Museum, New York; RISD Museum, Rhode Island (2021); Infinite Woman, Pilar Corrias, London (2021); Shahzia Sikander: Unbound, Jesus College Cambridge, Cambridge (2021); Disruption as Rapture, Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, North Carolina (2019); Parallax, Honolulu Museum of Art, Honolulu (2017); Ecstasy As Sublime, Heart As Vector, MAXXI | Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo, Rome (2016); Parallax, Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao (2015); Parallax, Bildmuseet Umea, Sweden (2014); Linda Pace Foundation, San Antonio (2012-13); Kogod Courtyard at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC (2012); Transformations, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (2010); Para/Site, Hong Kong (2009); Ikon Gallery, Birmingham (2008); daadgalerie, Berlin (2008); Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2007); Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2007); Miami Art Museum, Miami (2005); Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield (2004); The San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego (2004); Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C (2000) and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1999).
Sikander has been the recipient of numerous awards, grants and fellowships, including the Pollock Prize for Creativity, The Pollock-Krasner Foundation, New York (2023); Fukuoka Prize Awards Ceremony, Fukuoka City (2022); xPrize (2022), the Shahneela and Farhan Faruqui Popular Choice Art Prize at the Karachi Biennale (2017), the Inaugural Medal of Art, US Department of State (2012), John D. and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation Achievement award (2006-2011); the National Pride of Honour by the Pakistani Government (2005), the Joan Mitchell award (1998-999), and the Tiffany foundation award (1997). In 2006 Sikander was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.