Monsters Within (Primary Title)
Shahzia Sikander, Pakistani, born 1969 (Artist)
“My whole purpose of taking on miniature painting was to break the tradition, to experiment with it, to find new ways of making meaning, to question the relevance of it.” —Shahzia Sikander
Shahzia Sikander trained at Lahore’s National College of Art when it was the only school on the subcontinent still teaching Indian miniature painting as a full subject. While artists like Gulammohammed Sheikh borrowed certain narrative structures and formal elements from this genre, Sikander belongs to the first generation who returned entirely to its format and techniques—making her own paints, paper, and brushes—only to transform them in dialogue with international art. Here the traditional album-page format becomes her ground for personal expression. Combining realism, abstract pattern, and loose organic forms, the painting includes a fully modeled self-portrait of the artist at the lower left, with something like horns emerging from her head. A contorted figure crouches to her right; another abstracted squatting figure at the upper left merges human, bird, and plant forms; still other shapes vaguely resemble internal organs. This collection of bizarre oddities appears to float within cool-colored, bubble-filled margins.
The New VMFA: Collecting for the Future, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA, October 15, 2003 - January 4, 2004
Conversations with Traditions: Nilima Sheikh and Shahzia Sikander, Asia Society, New York, NY, November 17, 2001 - March 17, 2002; Middlebury College Museum of Art, Middlebury, VT, September 12 - December 1, 2002; Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA, June 12 - September 8, 2003
[1] Accessioned September 19, 2002.
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