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Shahzia Sikander

Web, 2002

Description

Maker

Title

Web

Year

2002

Medium

Ink, gouache, graphite, gravure, inkjet outlines, and tea on wasli paper

Materials/Techniques

Materials

Supports

Dimensions

Sheet: 22.7 x 18.9 cm (8 15/16 x 7 7/16 inches)

Type

Credit

Paula and Leonard Granoff Fund

Object Number

2003.46

About

After studying traditional miniature painting at the National College of Art in Lahore, Pakistan, her hometown, Shahzia Sikander came to RISD for graduate studies. Within two years of her graduation, her work gained the attention of the New York art world and has since been exhibited inter-nationally. Combining traditions of East and West in subject matter, style, and materials, she creates open-ended narratives that explore contemporary experience. In Web, highly detailed hunting scenes refer to Indo-Persian miniatures, while a loosely described container/purse of three parts dominates the composition. The delicate web offers a layer of complexity both formally and metaphorically, connecting the contemporary elements in the drawing such as the planes and towers. The drawing seems to reference the instability of a post-9/11 world.

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Projects & Publications

Publications

Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Shahzia Sikander

November 12, 2021 - January 30, 2022

The towers and aircraft in this painting call to mind the 9/11 attacks. The towers also suggest oil derricks, possible referencing the dependence of the United States on foreign oil, which was brought into question during President Bush’s impending invasion of Iraq. Heraldry links present-day policies to colonial-era exploitation. The dark purse-like form, a lingam casket, would have held an amulet, but as scholar Faisal Devji suggests, it “looks like grenades on a suicide belt.” The spider web refers to one that shielded the prophet Muhammad from persecutors as he hid in a cave. The lush landscape with animals both nurtured and preyed on—copied from a Mughal sheet in the collection of the Freer Gallery—is the foundation of this composition filled with references to protection and destruction.

The Primacy of Paper

January 15 - June 20, 2010

Shahzia Sikander’s works reflect the shifting nature of boundaries—geographical, cultural, and psychological—experienced by anyone who has left their country of origin to live in another. Combining the tradition of Indo-Persian miniatures with her own frequently expressive and abstract manner of painting, Sikander builds formal and metaphorical layers of meaning in Web. The abstracted purse, or box, itself implies a narrative, while the somewhat violent hunting scenes reference imagery in Persian miniature paintings. These figures are layered with a spider’s web and other references to contact or communication, such as planes and communication towers. The drawing seems to reference the instability of a post-9/11 world.

Use

The images on this website can enable discovery and collaboration and support new scholarship, and we encourage their use. This object is in Copyright. This object is Web with the accession number of 2003.46. To request high-resolution files or new photography, please send an email to imagerequest@risd.edu and include your name and the object's accession number.