Shahzia Sikander talks to Ben Luke about her influences—from writers to musicians and, after all, different artists—and the cultural experiences which have formed her life and work.
Sikander, born in 1969 in Lahore, Pakistan, skilled within the custom of Indo-Persian manuscript portray and has used its kinds, strategies and language as a launchpad for a wide-ranging engagement with colonial and postcolonial histories, with feminism, gender and sexuality, and with cultural id and narratives round race.
Working in drawing, portray, animation, video, mosaic and most not too long ago sculpture, she has created a physique of labor through which current and invented photos and kinds are juxtaposed to vivid and poetic impact. Technically beautiful and conceptually profound, her works have an instantaneous affect however reward sluggish trying with layered narratives, references and histories.
She discusses her early discovery of Michelangelo in Lahore, explains how she has channelled the “soulfulness” Eva Hesse present in minimalism in her response to historic manuscript portray, displays on the significance of her teenage expertise of Mogadishu, Somalia, and speaks in regards to the monumental significance of poetry to her work, together with the US author Adrienne Wealthy’s translations of the Indian poet Mirza Ghalib.
Plus, she offers perception into her life within the studio, and solutions our regular questions, together with which paintings, if she might solely have one, she would most wish to dwell with.
- Shahzia Sikander: Collective Habits, Palazzo Soranzo Van Axel, Venice, Italy, 20 April-20 October; Cincinnati Artwork Museum, Ohio, US, 14 February-4 Could 2025; Cleveland Museum of Artwork, 14 February-8 June 2025
- Shahzia Sikander: Havah…to breathe, air, life, College of Houston, Texas, US, till 31 October
- Entangled Pasts, 1768–now: Artwork, Colonialism and Change, Royal Academy of Arts, London, till 28 April 2024.