Born in Lahore, Pakistan in 1969, Shahzia Sikander is an artist who currently lives and works in New York City. Sikander acquired a Bachelor of Arts from the National College of Arts in Lahore where she learned the traditional practice of miniature painting. After graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design’s Master of Fine Arts program in 1995, Sikander moved to New York City to pursue her artwork. In 2006, the MacArthur Foundation awarded Sikander with the great honor of the Young Global Leader Fellowship. The work of Sikander is full of loaded imagery, visually beautiful, and ambiguous.
Despite the efforts of her peers and advisers to dissuade Sikander from miniature painting, the artist chose to study the low art form in an act of defiance. Sikander once felt that the form was ‘too kitsch and [her] limited exposure was primarily through work produced for tourist consumption.’ Sikander views her work as a deconstruction of the miniature painting by showing through her painting style that tradition, ideas, and the universe at large are constantly in a state of flux. The use of line is constantly evolving in her work so that a subject in one painting can be realistic, but in another painting the subject will appear entirely different. Recently, the artist has experimented with other forms such as installation, animation, and photo realistic drawing. The prominent goal of the artist is to illustrate the constant changing nature of boundaries whether they are cultural, emotional, psychological, etc. The work reflects the ever changing because of the layering of paint or animation that is fluid and contradicting.
Sikander is able to move past post-colonial clichés expected of her by disrupting the viewer’s perception with unlike objects and ideas connecting to each other. Sikander views binary oppositions as creators of oppression and hierarchy. Instead of using binary opposition in her work, Sikander layers subjects or uses peculiar forms. The subjects in her paintings come from Muslim, Persian, Western, Islamic, Greek, and Roman tradition. Identity, culture, tradition, and the inner self become entities that are fluid and able to move through time and space. This theme resonates with the deconstruction of the miniature as something that is a tradition but also as something that can be reinvented. From the ‘Dissonance to Detour’ work, the fluidity and chaos of language is present. The interpretation of language is something non-concrete and layered. A political topic that Sikander purposefully engages with is feminism. By using certain symbols of feminine and masculine identities, stereotypes of feminine representation are questioned.
A common critique of Sikander’s work is the perpetuation of stereotypes of South Asia. This critique comes from the exoticism and sensuality of the work. The use of the miniature is also problematic because the origin is centered around an ethnicity. Sikander argues that her work has become a ‘spectacle with cultural definitions’ rather than a body of work. The artist wants to frustrate meaning, to blur the boundaries between preconceived notions, and to show the layers and fluxuation in life through her work. The body of work becomes political to viewers because of the ‘foreign’ elements and symbols within the pieces. Sikander contemplates why ‘people have the inability to see the conceptual in other forms.’ The ambiguity of Sikander’s work is the element that draws viewers to her work, and if one loses a sense of curiosity with a narrow perception the pieces become post-colonial clichés.
“I was shocked to learn of people's inability to see "the conceptual" in other forms, ones outside the rather recent, narrow parameters established by practices of the 1960s, I find miniature painting a very conceptual activity.”
“It is not a question of what kind of meaning the image is transmitting, but what kind of meaning the viewer is presenting.”
“I am not a spokesperson.”
“Deconstructing is not the act of dismantling but recognition of the fact that inherently nothing is solid or pure. “
(shahziasikander.com)
Question: Do you agree with the ideas of Sikander? Do you feel that her work can be conceptual, and that if we assume there is a specific political message we are being ethnocentric?
4 comments:
Perhaps I am reading too much into this, but when reading Sikander's response of people making quick associations that her work represents something political when it may not. It makes me think of American society, and its constant need for instant gratification and wanting to know the answers to everything. We want to know why things happen, why things are made, what things mean. Sikander's work is a perfect example of this... just because it was made from a woman of a certain heritage doesn't confine her to only making work about her country or for that matter, her country's political issues of that moment.
On a separate note, I find it incredibly fascinating how inspired Sikander is by miniature painting. It is really interesting hearing about how nothing is pure and that anything can be deconstructed. For someone so interested in small art work it is ironic that some of her work has to be hung by the ceiling it is so big.
"It is not a question of what kind of meaning the image is transmitting, but what kind of meaning the viewer is presenting."
I agree with Sikander's statement because all people interpret artwork in their own unique ways, and what people feel when they see a piece is what matters and why people like the piece or not. I had never really thought about this idea before reading the quote but now it makes perfect sense.
~ben
to continue, I just read a quote that sums up this idea really well. It was said by Godfrey Reggio about his movie Koyaanisqatsi.
"Art is free. It stimulates the viewer to insert their own meaning, their own value. So while I might have this or that intention in creating this film, I realize fully that any meaning or value Koyaanisqatsi might have comes exclusively from the beholder. The film's role is to provoke, to raise questions that only the audience can answer. This is the highest value of any work of art, not predetermined meaning, but meaning gleaned from the experience of the encounter. The encounter is my interest, not the meaning. If meaning is the point, then propaganda and advertising is the form."
I think that a lot of times people (especially artists maybe) want to read waaay too much into things. Sometimes we change the meaning of something just to satisfy what we want it to mean...
Sikander shouldn't HAVE to make art that's political. but we as an audience also have a right to perceive whatever we want from it. She shouldn't have to be a spokesperson for her race/ethnicity/gender, however, I think that it's importance for us, as an audience to take into account her background. (and then, maybe we need to separate her art from that)
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