Shahzia Sikander

Curator: Rachel Kent

This major solo exhibition, the artist’s first in Australia, charted Shahzia Sikander’s career from Pakistan to the United States, where she has lived for the past fifteen years. Born in 1969 in Lahore, Pakistan, Sikander studied painting in the Mughal miniaturist tradition and relocated to New York in 1993 to undertake further studies. This exhibition was Sikander’s largest to date, encompassing works from the early 1990s through to 2007, including a vast wall painting which was commissioned and created on-site especially for the MCA.

Sikander’s art is characterised by its precision of line and delicacy of touch. From tightly structured miniature paintings to larger, more loosely formed watercolours in which pigments stain and bleed into one another, creating impressionistic forms, her works incorporate both figurative and abstract references. In these works Hindu, Muslim and Western imagery co-exist as historical tradition meets contemporary interpretation. Beauty, sensuality and a gently subversive humour underlies these works with their rounded female forms, mandalas, courtly interiors and dancing deities