Shahzia Sikander
dal 27/3/2007 al 6/5/2007
Segnalato da
Irish Museum of Modern Art - IMMA
27/3/2007
Shahzia Sikander
Irish Museum of Modern Art - IMMA, Dublin
Sikander specialised in Indo-Persian miniature painting at a time when there was little interest in this traditional practice. Comprising some 25 works the exhibition provides a brief overview of Sikander's career and focuses on her most recent practice. The show includes two of her animations alongside new large-scale paintings.
Solo show
The first solo museum exhibition in Europe of the work of Shahzia Sikander opens to
the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 28 March 2007. Comprising
some 25 works the exhibition provides a brief overview of Sikander's career and
focuses on her most recent practice. The exhibition includes two of her animations
alongside new large-scale paintings. While studying at the National College of Arts
in Lahore, Pakistan, Sikander specialised in Indo-Persian miniature painting at a
time when there was little interest in this traditional practice. She has described
her choice as being regarded with suspicion by her student colleagues, the practice
of miniatures seen as "excessively kitsch" and solely for tourist consumption.
Sikander was determined to create a dialogue with tradition, developing an original
artistic practice that includes painting, drawing, animation and complex
installations. Now based in New York her practice also incorporates the aesthetic
debates of popular iconography and contemporary cultural theory.
Sikander's work confronts and interrogates the perceptual distances between the
cultures designated as 'East' and 'West', an area of poignancy and difficulty in the
current political climate. The work of Sikander is particularly relevant in this
context, but unquestionably transcends it with an integration and exploration of
multiple viewpoints and contexts. Emerging from a post-colonial and post-partition
background Sikander is also interested in exploring both sides of the Hindu and
Muslim "border".
Sikander has embraced the possibilities of digital technology in her work using it
to literally 'animate' her paintings. Two examples of these animations are included
in this exhibition SpiNN, 2003 - 2006, (a pun on the news media channel CNN) and
Pursuit Curve, 2004. Sikander has also combined Photoshop technology with screen
printing to create large-scale paintings inspired by the miniature tradition. The
second of the series The Illustrated Page, 2007, is shown for the first time in
Dublin.
Shahzia Sikander was born in 1969 in Lahore, Pakistan, and currently lives in New
York. She received an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Art and Design in 1995.
In 1997, her work was selected for the Whitney Biennial, coinciding with a
simultaneous exhibition of her work in the Drawing Centre in New York. In 2003, she
was invited to participate in the Istanbul biennial, followed by the inaugural 2004
Seville Bienal and the Venice Biennale in 2005. Her work featured in the 2005 group
show Translation in the Palais de Tokyo, and most recently held Miniphilia, a solo
show in the Valentina Bonomo Gallery in Rome late last year. Sikander has received
many awards for her work - in 2006 she was a recipient of the prestigious MacArthur
Foundation fellowship.
This exhibition is curated by Seán Kissane, Curator: Exhibitions, IMMA.
A publication, published by IMMA in association with Charta, accompanies the
exhibition with texts by Seán Kissane and Professor Homi Bhabha, Professor of
English and American Literature, Harvard University.
Gallery Talk
On Tuesday 27 March at 5.00pm, Shahzia Sikander will present a talk on her
exhibition in the East Ground Floor Gallery. Admission is free but booking is
essential on tel: + 353 1 612 9948 or email: talksandlectures@imma.ie
Irish Museum of Modern Art
Royal Hospital, Military Road, Kilmainham - Dublin