Shahzia Sikander

Born 1969 in Lahore, Pakistan. Lives and works in New York. Since the early 1990s, Shahzia Sikander has been instrumental in the rediscovery, re-infusion, and re- contextualization 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.