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Shahzia Sikander, Pleasure Pillars, 2001. Collection of Amita and Purnendu Chatterjee. © 2021 Shahzia Sikander. Courtesy: the artist, Sean Kelly, New York and Pilar Corrias, London.

Introduction

Shahzia Sikander

Extraordinary Realities
November 12, 2021 - January 30, 2022

Born and raised in Pakistan, Shahzia Sikander (b. 1969) gained international recognition in the 1990s for her pioneering role in bringing painting traditions from South and Central Asia into dialogue with contemporary practices. Her work interrogates cultural identity, racial narratives, colonial and postcolonial histories, and issues of gender and sexuality. Through multivalent narratives layered across time, geography, and tradition, she shatters established hierarchies, norms, and stereotypes, using her imagination and playfulness to conjure extraordinary realities.

This exhibition explores the first 15 years of Sikander’s career, from her formal training in manuscript painting as a student at the National College of Arts in Lahore, Pakistan, where she enrolled in 1987, to her early years in the United States. Sikander moved to Providence in 1993 to study at the Rhode Island School of Design. She then lived in Houston for two years before settling in New York in 1997. Her work during this period reflects a new openness in the United States toward artists working outside of commonly accepted models, as well as a dramatic shift in the perception of Muslims following the events of 9/11. The potent vocabulary of Sikander’s early work continues to permeate her oeuvre today, and the subjects she confronted then have only become more relevant to contemporary discourse.

Jan Howard
Houghton P. Metcalf Jr. Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs
RISD Museum

This exhibition is supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Scintilla Foundation, and the Robert Lehman Foundation, Inc. Additional publication support from the Vikram and Geetanjali Kirloskar Visiting Scholar in Painting Endowed Fund at the Rhode Island School of Design and Furthermore: a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund.

This project is a part of the Feminist Art Coalition’s nationwide initiative highlighting feminist practices in the arts.

RISD Museum is supported by a grant from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, through an appropriation by the Rhode Island General Assembly and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and with the generous partnership of the Rhode Island School of Design, its Board of Trustees, and Museum Governors.

View the virtual gallery tour here.

For a complete exhibition checklist, request via email curatorial@risd.edu. 

Events

Talks and Conversations

Demo & Discourse: South and Central Asian manuscript-painting traditions

November 14, 2021 / 2-4 pm
Talks and Conversations

Demo & Discourse: South and Central Asian manuscript-painting traditions

November 19, 2021 / 2-4 pm

More Events

Projects & Publications

Publications

Shahzia Sikander

Extraordinary Realities

Articles

Exhibition tour

Curator
Shahzia Sikander: Extraordinary Realities By Jan Howard Curator Curator Jan Howard speaks with the artist about work in each of the exhibition's four sections tracing Sikander's artistic journey as she moved from Lahore, to Providence, to Houston and New York during the foundational years of her practice between 1987-2003. The themes and techniques discussed continue to resonate in Sikander's work today.

Continue

Selected Objects

Persian, Shiraz

Laila and Majnun at School, ca. 1570

Indian, India

Portrait of a Standing Woman, 1700s

Indian, India

Portrait of a Young Woman, late 1600s

Shahzia Sikander

Web, 2002

Shahzia Sikander

Self-Rooted, 1994

Donnamaria Bruton

Domestic Series: Expecting, ca. 1994

Donnamaria Bruton

Domestic Series: Frying Pan, ca. 1994

More objects +

RISD Museum

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