| Behind Shahzia, there is a smile. A being that transforms whimsical dreams of stars and sands into a wild spaces. Images of mothers, gods, and beasts that she dresses and superimposes in "Ready To Leave?" Shahzia leads my eyes into an exotic universe of odors and colors. As in a poem of Baudelaire, Shahzia sends to the "the reader" an "invitation to travel". This delicate miniature confuses the Western eye and provokes us to travel. Her paintings are bridges over oceans, tainted with Western references as we always invent them, we fuse in a "metissage" of other traditions, Islamic Pakistan and Indo India.
The blue planet for only one eye, functions as an oculus in the celestial dome of a baroque chapel, and as we look "Ready to Leave", this delicate eastern woman defies our Western archetypes to follow a different phenomenal path, change our contemporary aesthetic values. Instead of a dry and conceptual vocabulary her drawing implies mystery and curiosity. Instead of a fancy and meaningful process to astonish the art amateur, she reinvents Islamic miniature painting aesthetic. She is controversial because she gives to post-modern art lovers and critics enough keys and symbols to get their minds excited and continually questioning "what is art?", but at the same time, she enjoys letting her talent interpret the music of her imagination.
What then becomes problematic with Sikander's understanding of her young oeuvre, is the opposition between the simplistic understanding of Western art critics, and the dialogue that she continues with Pakistan. In America and Europe she is perceived as an exotic animal whose character is imprisoned within the paradigm of the Muslim woman who left oppression for Freedom. Western critics that have been writing about her work such as Roberta Smith or Valerie Fletcher, restrain their interpretation to the fa##cade of her skin, the fear of her religion, and the sex to which she belongs. Sikander is primarily an artist, who works with old techniques that she learned in Pakistan [1] seven years before she acquired a more conceptual education at RISD [2] in Providence, Rhode Island.
Her mother is a housewife and her father a public employee in a government bank. She describes her parents as very progressive and creative people who have always encourage her to be a painter. In her family all the women have careers and are as independent as men are. When she thought about going abroad, her goal was to travel and to be at the source of where important Islamic works of art were resting. They were in our libraries, and when she came to U.S she researched the illuminated manuscript that she could not have access to in Pakistan. The lack of sources for research in miniatures is due to two reasons. On the one hand, since the creation of Pakistan as an independent country apart from India in 1947, both countries have had limited cultural exchanges. Pakistan has developed a nationalistic identity to reinforce its separation with the Hindu culture, even thought most of the art resources stayed in India. On the other hand, the British Empire has left India in 1947, after having sorted, from most of the royal collection, treasures of Hindu and Islamic culture such has miniature painting. Thus, this heritage of history offered her the perspective to travel towards the west and the Anglo-Saxon world, which has conserved and collected the major works of Miniature paintings. Sikander says "they sleep in storage" at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. in the Vever Collection or at Brown University in Providence, the Minassian Collection of Persian, Mughal, and Indian Miniature Paintings at the John Hay Library, for example. After Sikander organized a first show at the Pakistanis embassy in Washington D.C in 1993, she applied for financial aid in Graduate School, and went to study at R.I.S.D. in Providence Rhodes Island.
When Shahzia chose to study miniature painting in Pakistan, it was regarded as a craft and was strongly related to "tourist art". For Shahzia miniature painting existed aside from Pakistanis modernism, and regarded it as a place of experimentation in which she was culturally connected. Her Art School in Lahore proposed primarily classical painting and sculpture department, but she was interested in miniature paintings even thought it was not considered a contemporary art form.
She started to study the different school of miniature painting of Persia, Pakistan and India. She learned how Muslims associate all texts with the ability to communicate divine knowledge. How miniature paintings come from a cultural tradition which attributes the highest respect to the literary arts to transmit Muhammad's teachings of the Lord. This illustrative tradition will be carried on in Muslim culture. Miniature painting will be integrated within the calligraphic writing, and emphases the experience of reading either the Koran or the life of the great Muslim and Hindu Ruler. One of the most influential Schools in Sikander's aesthetic vocabulary is the Mughal School. It is a style of miniature painting founded by two artists Mir Sayyid Ali and Abdus Samad of Shiraz who have illustrated the Persian Romance of Amir Hamza [3] in 1549. One of Mughal miniature characteristics is there combination of Persian, Hindu and European elements such as the atmospheric landscapes and perspective. This capacity to integrate foreign influences is key to Sikander oeuvre and process. The comparison above between her early miniature and the old Tabriz, Iranian miniature, testify of the influence of the western orientalist school on Islamic art. This miniature, Mirrat II, 1991-92, illustrate the kind of work that she was painting after her BA at the Art School of Lahore, Pakistan, before her M.F.A at R.I.S.D. After her discoveries of original Islamic miniature in U.S, added to the consciousness of not repeating what western artist had done aesthetically she started to realize miniature which involve more tensions between her traditional background and western conceptual process as she depicts, for example, hood's red Rider #2 in 1997.
However to understand the situation in which Sikander has learned to paint and to which she opposed her own vision of modernity, it is important to learned what contemporary Indian critic think about modernity. Sikander was early opposed to this debate has she chose to learn the craft of miniature painting instead of western painting style. By doing so, she offers today a new way to create modernity in a post-colonial situation.
"The innovations of what is called Modernism have become the new but fixed forms of our present moment. If we have to break out of the non-historical fixity of post-modernism, then we must search out and counterpose an alternative tradition taken from the neglected works left in the wide margin of the century, a tradition that may address itself not to this by now exploitable because inhuman rewriting of the past but for all our sakes, to a modern future in which community may be imagined again." [4]
This quote according to Sikander's iconography and composition illustrates how her aesthetic path is fading out of Western Postmodernism and Indian Modernism. Modern painters in India such as M.F Husain, Dhiraj Choudhury, and Nirode Manzumdar, whose works are auctioned out at Christies and Sotheby's since 1988, rejected the Academic British Art School and adopted other western technique that they discovered coming to France in the 50's. These artists have practiced painting outside the traditional formalism of Eastern art. They were also in opposition to the Orientalist colonial style of the 19th century, which was the academic style in the 40's. Instead they were fascinated by Picasso or Matisse and offered an Indian reinterpretation of it. In some ways this attitude didn't change from the colonial style and it was just another way to avoid their tradition and respond to euro-centric realm of art criticism. These works appear to Sikander as well as the new generation issued from the strong Pakistanis and Indian post war period of nationalism as inauthentic and unhistorical. "Sikander's teachers" generations are painters of that post-colonial period. They are to her "exhorted by liberal European orientalist within the imperial setup to reappropriate their own (depleted) tradition through new techniques of translation." Thus Sikander generation is an the "emerging elite [who] initiated a process of self-distancing through mimicry." [5] Therefore Sikander debates is different from what Roberta Smith calls "a 90's sense of feminist verve", Sikander's challenge is to return to traditional eastern form to find her own identity.
Therefore an Indian postmodernism, with artists such as Sikander and Ravinder Reddy, comes out in the 90s with its harmonious Eastern imagery, which belong to the debate with older Muslim or Hindu traditions. This imagery is characterized by the visual tension created by these contemporary artists which by using traditional medium against post-colonial aesthetic, refuses the supremacy of the Western art world and affirm its difference by means of beauty and authenticity, celebrating the Eastern tradition as a major art form.
For Sikander tradition is relevant as it is juxtaposed with the avant-garde as a conscious need to blur boundaries. She says: While I didnt set out with the aim to subvert, let alone reinvent a tradition, those boundaries became blurred simply through my engagement with miniature painting, through the act of making them. I was aware from the start that I was indulging in an anachronistic practice, labor intensive and limited in the scope of its impact, but I was interested in an art form whose present was of the past [6]
The next theme of this challenging adventure of Sikander being a Pakistanis painter in America is that she faces two debates at the same time. She is engaged with post modernism American issues, which put her in the category ethnic woman painter and sees in her continuity with the decorative trend of the 1970s feminist artist. Too rich to bear narrow interpretation [Sikanders drawings] attest to an abiding preoccupation with images of women as battlegrounds and arenas for negotiation between cultural forces of assimilation and orthodoxy. [7] This simplistic analyze of Sikanders drawings seems to be a way to appropriate her work in the realm of contemporary American culture as if critics were pilgrims conquering the West or Europeans colonizing the East. Sikander personally finds this understanding of her paintings very simplistic as they only justified by the fact that she is a Muslim woman painting in America: I believe this debate is inherently at fault. Even as a young woman from a fairly patriarchal society and an educated background I find the term "women of Islam" very problematic. The fact that one is being allowed to create that context is offensive and simplistic, dangerous and manipulative, not to mention exhausted and boring. She rather relies on the subjectivity of the viewer and the tension she can create at the sight of her works: For me art is not the vehicle for politics, feminism or religion. Art for me is a ticket to experience . I also feel that no matter how transcending, liberating or empowering an act art becomes, boundaries always exist- be they economical, cultural, national, religious, political, geographical, historical or psychological. But as an artist it becomes essential for me to understand and address such boundaries, only to break them down, to open discussion, to raise questions and to articulate their shifting nature.
In United States Sikanders work beside being received as a new feminist take on Muslim oppression, has been received as an extraordinary realization of smart and successful drawing. She Combines the luminous pigments, mythic subject matter, and pinhead detail of that meticulous tradition with dreamlike, surrealist distortions, loose brushwork, and content drawn from the popular culture of both Pakistan and the United States. [8] This recognition of her work as being a new voice of the East is an international achievement since she has been exhibited the drawing center and the Whitney Biennial in 1997.
She reacts against her own tradition in Space In Between, 1995, but in creative ways, by importing in her work the notion of positive and negative space, she uses abstaction without irony but tolerance and humility. She accepts the value of the past and evolves within a traditional process, and as she integrates her self-portrait in the composition, she enriches the diversity of her visual agenda. Instead of negatively living a blank page of manuscript just to state her minimalist reaction to her traditions, she challenges it. Formally she transforms these narrative paintings into small icons. She adds to this courtly style her own personality as if she was inventing a new school of miniature painting. She frees the crafts from the chore of labour by carrying it to delight, and enjoys to create before us a visual poetry. Another of her interest in miniatures is the integration of figures from any part of the plan. She is interested in the tension between the placement of objects and figures with the flat composition of her painting to avoid its narrative tendency and the genre that miniature as always served before. She sees in miniature its aesthetic potential, and draws her life force into it. She intensely, by long time process labor oriented manner, searches for colors and pigments that she gradually learned through academic education. What makes Sikander a successful artist is that her ideas rely on a technique to express it.
The purpose of this essay, beside trying to open new doors to the delicacy of Sikanders work, might be also to show how the different perspectives that she takes on her work, which is involved at the same in the western and the Eastern debate of contemporary esthetic, has a power to be relevant to different sensitivity.
In my eyes, you make me travel. I see you more as a contemporary Pakistanis artist who found synthesis has she was away from her native culture. I see your work with my western sensitivity, and recognize hints or symbols of my civilization as a way to understand it in my language and context. It is under the pleasure of the travel, the challenge that it is to change culture that I look at your works, which is a metaphor of what we should do as we see art. Embracing it with all our senses to better learn from the artist subjectivity instead of avoiding that aesthetic seduction by ordering its understanding with our personal standards. What I mean by this is that we should recognize that Sikander is, independently from being a woman, Muslim, Pakistanis and living in America, an artist. [9]
V.V.V
May 4, 2001
Bibliography
Shahzia Sikander.
Sikander, Shahzia
Chicago, IL : Renaissance Society, University of Chicago, 1998.
A guide to an exhibition of Islamic miniature painting and book illumination,
New York. Metropolitan museum of art.
[Portland, Me., The Southworth press, 1933]
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Shimla : Delhi : Indian Institute of Advanced Study ; in association with B.R. Pub. Corp., 1989.
1. Shapes and forms
Datta, Arup K., 1942-
[Calcutta] Transition Books [1973]
Art and nationalism in colonial India : occidental orientations /
Mitter, Partha
New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 1994.
A jeweler's eye : Islamic arts of the book from the Vever Collection /
Arthur M. Sackler Gallery (Smithsonian Institution)
Washington, D.C. : Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, in association with University of Washington Press, Seattle, c1988.
Contemporary art in Asia : traditions/tensions /
New York : Asia Society Galleries, 1996.
Raymond Williams, Jean-Francois Lyotard, the Postmodern condition: A Report on Knowledge, Manchester, 1986
Press:
Roberta Smith.
Drawing that pushes beyond the boundaries, The New York Times, March 21, 1997
Leslie Camhi. Xtra Small, the village voice, November 25th, 1997
Geeta Kapur, When Was Modernism in India, Journal of Art and Ideas, New Delhi, Number 27-28, March 1995
SHAHZIA SIKANDER
Education
1995 M.F.A., Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI
1992 B.F.A., National College of Arts, Lahore, Pakistan
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2000 Acts Of Balance, Whitney Museum, Phillip Morris Branch, NYC (catalog)
1999 Shahzia Sikander Directions. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. (catalog)
1999 The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, Kansas City, MO (catalog)
1998 The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago (catalog)
1997 Miniatures and Murals, Deitch Projects, New York
1996 Knock Knock Who's There?, Mithilia, Mithilia Who? Artist Installation, Project Row Houses, Houston
1993 Pakistan Embassy, Washington DC
Selected Group Exhibitions
2000 00, Barbara Gladstone Gallery, NYC, (catalog)
Greater New York, PS1, in collaboration with MOMA, Queens, NY
1999 The American Century, Whitney Museum, NYC, (catalog)
Third Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art,Brisbane,Australia(catalog)
Art-Worlds in Dialogue, Ludwig Museum, Koln, Germany (catalog)
Negotiating Small Truths, The Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, TX
Cinco Continentes y una Ciudad, Museo de Ciudad de Mexico, Mexico City, Mexico (catalog)
1998 Pop Surrealism, Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, CT (catalog)
Global Vision-New Art form the 90s-Part 2, Deste Foundation, Center for Contemporary Art, Athens
I love New York, Ludwig Museum, Koln, Germany (catalog)
Liberating Tradition, Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College,
Annandale-On-Hudson, NY
On the Wall, Forum for Contemporary Art, St. Louis, MO
1997 Out of India, The Queens Museum of Art, Flushing Meadows, NY (catalog)
Three Great Walls, Yerba Buena Gardens Center for the Arts, San Francisco
Project Painting, Lehman Maupin Gallery, New York, (catalog)
Caldas da Rainha Biennial, Portugal
1997 Biennial Exhibition, The Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC(catalog)
Selections Spring '97, The Drawing Center, New York
1996 An Intelligent Rebellion, Women Artists of Pakistan, Bradford City Museum, England (catalog)
1996 Houston Area Exhibition, Blaffer Gallery, University of Houston
1994 A Selection of Contemporary Paintings from Pakistan, Pacific Asia Museum, Pasadena, CA (catalog)
1992 New Artists, Recent Works, Rhotas Gallery, Islamabad, Pakistan
Selected Bibliography
2000 Cotter, Holland, Shahzia Sikander, Acts of Balance, The New York Times,
Friday, June 9, 2000
Sirmans, Franklin, Shahzia Sikander, Acts of Balance, Time Out, June 15-22
Schwabsky, Barry, A Painter of Miniatures on a Maximum Scale, Arts and Leisure, The NewYork Times, Sunday, May 14, 2000
Review, The New Yorker, May 22, 2000
Pedersen, Victoria, Echoes from the Orient, Paper, May, 2000
Zinnes, Harriet, Review, NY Arts, May 2000, pg 73
Savul, Rehana, Re-inventing Miniature Profile, Libas International, Volume 13, 2000, Issue 2
Henry, Max, Todays Artist, Shahzia Sikander interviewed by Max Henry,
The Art News Paper, June-July, 2000
Newhall, Edith, Installation New York Magazine, April 24, 2000, pg 164
Fletcher, Valerie, Exhibition Catalog, Hirshhorn Museum, DC, 2000
1999 Fletcher, Valerie, Kunstweltem im Dialog, Mark Sheps et al. Ed. Exhibition Catalog, Museum Ludwig, 1999
Friis Hansen, Dana. Beyond the Future, Third Asia-Pacific Triennial, Exhibition Catalog, Queensland Art Gallery, 1999
DeMeo Carlozzi, Annette, Negotiating Small Truths Exhibition Catalog, Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, 1999
Phillips, Lisa. The American Century, Exhibition Catalog, Whitney Museum of American Art, 1999
Bhabha, Homi, Shahzia Sikander, A Happy Dislocation, Editors- Elaine Kim and Margo Machida, Fresh Talk:Daring Gazes, University of California Press
Bhabha, Homi, Miniaturizing Modernity, Public Culture, Winter 99,
Volume 2, No. 1, 1999
Farris Phoebe, Women Artists of Color, A Bio-Critical Sourcebook to 20th Century Artists in the Americas, Greenwood Press, 1999
Francine Prose, The Gallery:The Artist as Curator, The Wall Street Journal, Thusday, May 20, 1999
Gomez-Haro, Germaine, Five Continents and a City- Museo de Ciudad de Mexico, Art Nexus, no 33, Aug-Oct, 1999
Hoban, Phoebe, The Mod Squad, New York Magazine, January 11, 1999
pgs. 30-37, 1999
1998 Yeon Kim, Yu, Fragmented Stories, Five Continents and One City-International Salon of Painting, Exhibition Catalog, Mexico City, Mexico, 1998
Self Dana, Exhibition Catalog, Kemper Museum, Kansas City, MO, 98-99
os, Katerina, Global Vision: New Art from the 90s (part2), Exhibition Catalog, Deste Foundation, Center for Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece 1998
Watkin, Mel, On the Wall: Selections from the Drawing Center, Exhibition Catalog, Forum For Contemporary Art, St. Louis, 1998
Devji, Faisal, Translated Pleasures Exhibition Catalog, The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, 1998
Bhabha, Homi, Chillava Klatch:Shahzia Sikander interviewed by Homi Bhabha, Exhibition Catalog, The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, 1998
Edward Gomez, Past is Present, Art and Antiques, December 1998, pgs 60-66
Thomas McEvilley,Tracking the Indian Diaspora,Art in America,Oct98pg74
Keley Chris, Artswatch-Inside Cover, Ms. Magazine, May-June 98, volume 8,No. 6, pg 1 and 75
Greenberg, Kevin. Sikander presents veiled illusions, Chicago Maroon, Volume 109, number 38, April 7, 1998. pg. 1.
Jana, Reena, Shahzia Sikander: Celebration of Femaleness, Flash Art, Mar-Apr
Johnston, Patricia. Studio - Shahzia Sikander: Reinventing the Miniature, ArtNews, February, 1998, volume 97, number 2. pp. 86-88
Schwabsky, Barry. Shahzia Sikander, Out of India, ArtForum International, 1998. pp. 113.
Walz, Cara, Cultural Surgery, Pitch Weekly, Nov 25-Dec 2, Kansas City, MO
1997 Farver, Jane, Out of India: Contemporary Art of the South Asian Diaspora, Exhibition Catalog, Queens Museum of Art, 1997
Phillips, Lisa and Louise Neri, 1997 Whitney Biennial, Exhibition Catalog, Whitney Museum of American Art, 1997
Colpit, Frances, Core 1997, Exhibition Catalog, Glassel School of Art, 1997
1997 Atamian, Christopher. Review-Project Painting. Review October 1, 1997.
pgs. 1 19-20
Bonetti, David. Yerba Buena Center chalks up more winners, The San Francisco Examiner, Friday, Sep. 26, 1997. pg. C-8.
Camhi, Leslie. Xtra Small, The Village Voice. Nov. 25, Vol. XLII No. 47, 1997. pg. 107
Cotter, Holland. Many Shows and Many Indias, The New York Times, Friday, December 26, 1997. pgs. E43 and E45
Goodman, Jonathon. Small Pleasures, World Art, Issue No. 15, 1997. pgs28-31
Haider, Masood Sikander's art defines East-West divide, Dawn (Pakistan), Wednesday, December 10, 1997. pg.11
Hansen, Dana Fris. Full Blown, Art Asia Pacific, Issue No. 16, 1997. pgs. 44-49
Jonathan Mandell, India Inc., NewsDay, Tuesday, November 25, 1997.
Kimmelman, Michael. Biennial Narratives Snagged on the Cutting Edge, The New York Times, Friday, March 21
Murdock, Robert. Review-Murals and Miniatures, Review November 15, 1997. pgs. 19-20
Review, The New Yorker, Dec. 1, 1997. pg. 27
Saltz, Jerry. Review- Murals and Miniatures, Time Out New York, Issue No. 114, Nov. 27-Dec. 4, 1997. pg. 52
Ingrid Schaffner, Project Painting. Exhibition Catalog, 1997.
Schjeldahl, Peter. Painting Rules, The Village Voice, 30 September, Vol. XLII, No. 39, 1997. pg. 97
Smith, Roberta. Paintings and Photos With Tales to Tell, Often About the Oddities of Growing Up, The New York Times, Friday, December 5,1997pg E31
Wakefield, Neville. Three to Watch, Elle Decor No. 56, Dec/Jan 98, pgs. 62-70 .
Barbara A. MacAdam, Review, Whitney Biennial, ArtNews, May 97
Franklin Sirmans, Review, Selections Spring '97 The Drawing Center, Flash Art, May/June 97
Kenneth Baker, Uprooted, The San Francisco Chronicle, May 22, 97
Roberta Smith, Drawing that Pushes Beyond the Boundaries, The New York Times. March 21
Rena Jana, Cultural Weaving, Asian Art News, March/April
Frances Colpit, Core 1997 Exhibition Catalog
1996 Gudrun Klein, Beyond Surfaces Art Lies, Winter Issue No. 13, 96/97, pgs.11-13
Carol Lutfy, Asian Artists In America: Shahzia Sikander, Atelier International, Issue No. 832 December, pgs. 49-57, 96
Rachel Varghese, Pushing the Limits, Indo-American News, April 8, 96
David Pagel, Do-It-Yourself World-Making, Core 1996 Exhibition Catalog, 96
1994 Hashmi, Salima and Niva Poovaya-Smith, An Intelligent Rebellion:Women Artists of Pakistan, Exhibition Catalog, Bradford Museum, UK
1994 Marcella Sirhandi, A Selection of Contemporary Paintings from Pakistan, Exhibition Catalog. Pacific Asia Museum, Pasadena, CA
1993 Salima Hashmi, Fine Art Newsline, Pakistan, April 1993
Aasim Akhter, Small is Beautiful, Herald, Pakistan, April
1992 Salima Hashmi, Shahzia's Miniatures Libas International, London, March
Rina Saeed Khan, The Best Art to have come out of NCA in Two Decades, The Friday Times Lahore, February 27 - March 6, 1992
Awards
1999 1999 South Asian Womens Creative Collective Achievement Award
1998-99 The Joan Mitchell Award
1997 The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award
1995-97 Core Fellowship, Glassel School of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
1993-95 Graduate Fellowship Award, Rhode Island School of Design
1993 Shakir Ali Award/Kipling award, (highest merit award) National College of Arts, Lahore
1993 Haji Sharif Award, (excellence in Miniature Painting) National College of Arts, Lahore
1992 Distinction Award, Thesis Project, National College of Arts, Lahore
Co-Curated The Stroke - an overview of contemporary painting at Exit Art,
( May 1 - July 2, 1999 )
[1] B.F.A, 1992, National College of Arts, Lahore, Pakistan.
[2] Rhode Island School of Design, M.F.A., 1995
[3] Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
4] Raymond Williams, Jean-Francois Lyotard, the Postmodern condition: A Report on Knowledge, Manchester, 1986 pp71-72
[5] Geeta Kapur, page 3
[6] Shahzia Sikander, interview, April 2001
[7] Leslie Camhi
[8] ibid.
[9] Letter written to Shahzia Sikander before the interview. |
