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Installation view of Shahzia Sikander: Extraordinary Realities on view 11-12-2021 through 01-30-2022 at the RISD Museum.

Shahzia Sikander

Extraordinary Realities
November 12, 2021 - January 30, 2022
Installation view of Shahzia Sikander: Extraordinary Realities on view 11-12-2021 through 01-30-2022 at the RISD Museum.

Introduction

Pakistani American artist Shahzia Sikander (RISD MFA 1995, Painting and Printmaking) is internationally celebrated for bringing painting traditions from South and Central Asia into dialogue with contemporary art practice. This exhibition tracks the first 15 years of this artistic journey, from her groundbreaking deconstruction of illustrated manuscript painting in Pakistan to the development of a new personal vocabulary at RISD, expanded explorations around identity as a Core Fellow at the Glassell School of Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and her global outlook during her first years in New York. During this period, Sikander richly interrogated gender, sexuality, race, class, and history, creating open-ended narratives that have sustained her work as one of the most significant artists working today.

Jan Howard

Exhibition images

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Events

  • Talks and Conversations

Demo & Discourse

South and Central Asian manuscript-painting traditions
November 19, 2021 / 2-4 pm
  • Talks and Conversations

Demo & Discourse

South and Central Asian manuscript-painting traditions
November 14, 2021 / 2-4 pm

Shahzia Sikander

Extraordinary Realities
November 12, 2021 - January 30, 2022

Publications

  • Books

Shahzia Sikander: Extraordinary Realities

This lively volume tracks the first fifteen years in the prolific career of Shahzia Sikander (RISD MFA 1995, Painting and Printmaking), reclaiming her pioneering role in reviving Indo-Persian manuscript painting traditions as contemporary practice in Pakistan and tracing her early years in the US as she created work that explores gender and sexuality, cultural identity, racial narratives, and colonial and postcolonial histories.

Articles

Exhibition tour: Shahzia Sikander: Extraordinary Realities

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.

Related Objects

Shahzia Sikander

Self-Rooted
Illustrations of towers, planes, and wildlife spread across the page. From the upper center radiates a graphite web created by a spider. On the left is a dark, organic shape.

Shahzia Sikander

Web

Donnamaria Bruton

Domestic Series: Expecting

Shahzia Sikander

Monsters Female Desires and States of Dislocation

Unknown Maker, Persian

Laila and Majnun at School, Safavid

Shahzia Sikander

Monsters Female Desires and States of Dislocation

Shahzia Sikander

Monsters Female Desires and States of Dislocation

Shahzia Sikander

Monsters Female Desires and States of Dislocation
  • More objects +

Shahzia Sikander : Extraordinary Realities

November 12, 2021 - January 30, 2022
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