Celebrated visual artist Shahzia Sikander is the Alan Kanzer Artist-in-Residence at the Zuckerman Institute and a Mentor in the MFA Visual Arts Program. She will discuss recent work, including Witness, her sculpture that was vandalized by a man with a hammer on July 8, 2024, in Houston, Texas. “I have chosen not to repair it. I want to leave it beheaded, for all to see. The work is now a witness to the fissures in our country.” Response by Betti-Sue Hertz, Director and Chief Curator, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery.
Join Shahzia Sikander, an internationally renowned Pakistani-American multimedia artist and a Yale Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration (RITM) Arts & Practitioner Fellow, and Wendall K. Harrington, Professor in the Practice of Design and Head of Projection Design, David Geffen School of Drama at Yale, for a conversation addressing the artist’s practice, her reframing of South Asian visual histories through a contemporary feminist perspective, and her exploration of gender, race, and colonial histories. Introduction by Kymberly N. Pinder, Ph.D. 1995, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Dean, Yale School of Art.
The thought-provoking discussion features pioneering Pakistani-American artist Shahzia Sikander, one of the most influential artists working today, in conversation with Diana Campbell, Chief Curator of the Dhaka Art Summit and Artistic Director of the Samdani Art Foundation. Sikander is widely celebrated for expanding and subverting pre-modern and classical Central and South Asian miniature painting traditions and launching the form known today as neo-miniature. They will reflect on the art historical importance and global trajectory of Sikander’s work, including her participation in Campbell's 2014 Dhaka Art Summit.
Over the past few years, ARC and ATLT have observed a dramatic increase in artistic censorship, ranging from book bans and anti-drag legislation in the U.S. to unjust laws worldwide that threaten artists and seek to erase rich cultures. Through engaging interdisciplinary discussions, keynote speeches, and artistic interventions, the summit will underscore the global censorship artists face, while promoting unity and resilience within the creative community to uphold artistic freedom and defend human rights
No culture exists in a vacuum, without a context or a past. During this lecture series, we will examine the ways historical ideas, forms, and techniques continue to shape the arts and cultures of today. We will start with archeological explorations, move on to artists who continue ancient traditions, and bring in contemporary artists referencing and exploring the past.
Please join Shahzia Sikander and Pace Prints Thursday, June 6, 5pm, at 536 West 22nd Street, for a conversation between the artist, Pace Paper director Rachel Gladfelter and Pace Prints master intaglio printer Sarah Carpenter. The discussion will be moderated by curator Isabelle Dervaux. Seating is limited, and RSVPs will be required for all attendees.
Join us for an exhilarating outdoor celebration marking the unveiling of Shahzia Sikander’s majestic new sculpture, NOW. This stunning 8-foot bronze piece, situated on Washington Street in front of The Ballantine House, stands as a beacon of artistic innovation. Hear remarks from the renowned artist Shahzia Sikander herself and experience the unique soundscapes of Raed Ransom, DJ and founder of YallaPunk, who will be spinning an infectious blend of disco and funk music infused with SWANA (Southwest Asia and North Africa) beats.
For the multimedia exhibition Havah… to breathe, air, life, artist Shahzia Sikander has created major new work on the theme of justice. The work in its entirety is composed of four distinct elements, two of which will be on display at the University of Houston Spring 2024. Havah… is a culmination of Sikander’s exploration of female representation in public monuments and marks her first major, site-specific outdoor exhibition in sculptural form. Disrupting more classic forms of public sculpture, the artist proclaims, “I have always had an affinity for the anti-monument within my practice.” It is the history of monumental public works, from which women and people of color have largely been absent, that provide a starting point for Sikander to reinsert the female figure into our field of visual culture. The title for the work, Havah, is taken from the word meaning “air” or “atmosphere” in Urdu and “Eve” in Arabic and Hebrew. It is precisely these ephemeral qualities that the artist brings to this work that mark it as distinct from more traditional public monuments we are accustomed to viewing. These temporary artworks are just that—works that are never meant to be fixed and unchanging, but are fluid in their space and their meaning.
This course thinks across the arts with the remarkable artist Shahzia Sikander. Over three decades, Sikander has produced compelling objects that practically and theoretically transcend borders and probe contested histories. Sikander is internationally renowned for a pioneering, multi-media practice that takes classical Indo-Persian miniature painting as its point of departure, and inflects it with contemporary South Asian, American, Feminist, and Muslim perspectives. Sikander’s work stands in opposition to the idea of homogenous and authentic national cultures; instead, Sikander asks that we understand terms such as “tradition,” “culture” and “identity” as unstable, abstract, and constantly evolving. This course considers different aspects of Sikander’s practice, from her training in Indo-Persian painting to her work with poets, dancers, and composers. We’ll engage closely with South Asian paintings, and a range of texts, including works by Aruna D’Souza, Gayatri Gopinath, and Saidiya Hartman.
Join Sikander as she discusses her artistic practice as well as recent and ongoing projects, including NOW, an eight-foot bronze female sculpture installed on the roof of the Manhattan Appellate Courthouse; Reckoning, an animation that unfolded across the screens of Times Square every midnight in September 2023; and a survey exhibition of her work organized by the Cincinnati Art Museum and the Cleveland Museum of Art, opening at the Palazzo Soranzo Van Axel in Venice in April 2024.
This lecture is made possible by the Fran and Warren Rupp Contemporary Artist Fund.
Art at Amtrak, the official public art program of Amtrak, presents diverse, unique and memorable art projects to enhance, invigorate and humanize the travel experience at Amtrak stations. The art program reflects and celebrates each region's creative preeminence by featuring contemporary artists through rotating exhibitions.
The program launched at New York Penn Station in June 2022, has expanded to Moynihan Train Hall in Summer 2023, to Washington Union Station and William H. Gray III 30th Street Station in Fall 2023.
Art at Amtrak is curated and produced by Debra Simon Art Consulting.
Sean Kelly Gallery is delighted to announce Shahzia Sikander's major permanent public art installation, Metaxu, one of four site-specific art installations in the new Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Center. Sikander's work joins installations by Sandra Cinto, Sam Gilliam, and Elias Sime, each chosen to reflect the Hopkins Bloomberg Center's mission to foster discovery and the global exchange of ideas.
First realized as a painting, transformed into an animation, and would later take its final form as a large-scale glass mosaic mural, entitled Metaxu – a Greek word meaning "in-between" or "middle ground." For this installation, Sikander renders a lush garden landscape with vibrant pieces of multi-colored glass. Drawing inspiration from the Polish poet and essayist Adam Zagajewski who reinterpreted the word to describe the state of a human being who is perennially nomadic. Additionally, French philosopher Simone Weil further added to this definition, describing "metaxu" as the condition of those who pursue lifelong paths to truth and knowledge.
The diverse works from eighteen artists will be installed throughout the gallery to eschew singular storytelling and instantiate multiple narratives for our fourth and final exhibition of 2023. Taking as its point of departure the fact that glass as a material fluctuates between solid and liquid, Form and Formless meditates on the slipperiness rather than the fixity of categories of identity (such as gender, sexuality, and race, among others).
The 2023 Alan Kanzer Artist-in-Residence is painter Shahzia Sikander. In her role, Sikander will engage with artists and scientists in interdisciplinary pursuit to gain a deeper understanding of the mind and brain. Fostering creative pursuit in neuroscience and the arts, the Alan Kanzer Artist-in-Residence is a collaboration between Columbia's Zuckerman Institute and School of the Arts. The Alan Kanzer Artist-in-Residence program enables visual artists opportunities to collaborate both formally and informally with scientists studying the brain, the senses, perception, learning and memory, and promotes engagement across the Institute and the surrounding community. She will work with a faculty host to define and achieve concrete outcomes, such as works of art that benefit her creative pursuit, Institute scientists and the community-at-large. By the end of the residency, Sikander, the scientists and members of the wider community will benefit from access to new knowledge and perspectives from these cross-disciplinary activities.
This year’s festivities promise to be a memorable testament to our beloved Drawing Center, celebrating a glorious lineup of individuals whose accomplishments and deep commitment to our chosen medium exemplify drawing’s necessity and unique significance in today’s world. The Drawing Center’s Gala is the leading fundraiser in support of our organization. Funds generated through this event support our exhibitions, publications, public programs, and education initiatives, furthering our enduring mission to explore the medium of drawing as primary, dynamic, and relevant to contemporary culture, the future of art, and creative thought.
Pakistani-American multi-media visual artist Shahzia Sikander collaborates with the Movement Lab, Theatre Department, Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, and South Asia Institute on this process-focused Media Movement Salon (MeMoSa) Series. With a different focus each day, Shahzia will present her work in conjunction with student artists from Monday April 10th through Thursday April 13th. Shahzia then has invited fellow New York based South Asian artists to co-present their works in process on Friday and Saturday April 14th-15th. Contributing artists include Vijay Iyer, Aruna D’Souza, Chitra Ganesh, Priyanka Dasgupta, Anurima Banerji and Sa’dia Rehman.
MeMoSa Series will run from 4:00-6:00pm Monday (4/10), Tuesday (4/11), Thursday (4/13) and Friday (4/14), from 10:00am-12:00pm Wednesday (4/12), and from 3:00-5:00pm Saturday (4/15). Drop-ins are welcome!
This culminating event will look to the future of diasporic art as it contextualizes a shared narrative- a colonized past and an imperial present. Fariha Khan, Asian American Studies Co-Director, will be in conversation with Shahzia Sikander, a visual artist who has redefined contemporary understandings of diaspora and difference and Arooj Aftab, whose work as a musician has transcended genres and histories. This talk will showcase the global interconnectedness of each artist’s work as they redefine the unfurling of South Asian American Diasporic Arts. This event is open to the University and the Philadelphia community and will include a Q&A.
Join us March 7 for this exciting dialogue, presented by NYU Intersectional Feminist/Queer Studies Collective with 19 Washington Square North and co-sponsored by the Grey Art Gallery.
Alongside the opening of the exhibition of the work of Pakistani-American artist Shahzia Sikander at 19WSN, we invite you to a dialogue between Sikander and Gayatri Gopinath (Director, Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, NYU). Sikander’s photographs, initially taken in 2012, depict the ruin and desolation of a South Asian movie theater and its sole caretaker in Khorfakkan, Sharjah, and speak poignantly to the questions of home, displacement, belonging, and unbelonging that touch the lives of many South Asian migrants in the UAE.
Alex Katz’s work is distinguished by generative engagements with the worlds of dance, theater, literature, and fashion. Friends and collaborators from across these fields form the rich creative community that has surrounded the artist since the mid-century, and is pictured throughout the retrospective Alex Katz: Gathering. This half-day program explores the dynamics of interdisciplinary collaboration and exchange. Taking as its frame of reference Katz’s boundary-crossing partnerships over the last seven decades with poets, dancers, directors, and designers, the event will consist of panel discussions featuring Sarah Crowner, Kevin Lotery, and Shantell Martin on Katz's dance and theater work; Andrew Durbin, Shahzia Sikander, and Ivy Wilson on the exchange between visual art and poetry; and poetry readings by John Godfrey, Vincent Katz, Eileen Myles, Ron Padgett, and Anne Waldman.
Host Lois Harada 10 PR sits down with internally-acclaimed artists Shahzia Sikander MFA 95 PT/PR and Huma Bhabha 85 PR, for a conversation about their recent participation in the RISD Limited Editions initiative, memories from their time at RISD and what they are working on now!
Artist Shahzia Sikander and human rights attorney Becca Heller will join in a public conversation on Monday, February 6 at 6 PM at Sony Square (25 Madison Avenue at 25th Street). Justice Judith Gische, who served as a judge for thirty-two years and is a member of the Board of Directors of the New York City Chapter of the New York State Women’s Bar Association, will moderate.
Pilar Corrias is excited to announce that Shahzia Sikander has been awarded the Pollock Prize for Creativity by The Pollock-Krasner Foundation.
The Pollock-Krasner Foundation has awarded the $50,000 prize in honour of Sikander’s new multimedia exhibition, Havah…to breathe, air, life, at Madison Square Park and at the neighboring Courthouse of the Appellate Division, First Department of the Supreme Court of the State of New York.
Ms. Shahzia Sikander is a leading South Asian artist. She has brought new life and contemporary significance to traditional art forms by making full use of the latest digital technology in the world of miniature painting, which follows conventions dating back to the Mughal Empire. By metaphorically depicting the grave problems facing the world through contemporary forms, she has become a role model for female artists in South Asia and continues to pave the way for future younger generations to follow.
Long viewed as an engine of social mobility, the university is in crisis. Our day-long
convening inaugurates ongoing reflection on themes including: the history of the
disciplines, global histories of dissent, the university as infrastructure and ideological
apparatus, mass intellectuality, and democratic education.
A symposium exploring the artistic practice of Shahzia Sikander – whose work is currently on display in the West Court Gallery
Can decolonisation entail forms of intimacy? In the search for an answer to this question, an exhibition focusing on the earlier and more recent works of Pakistani-American artist Shahzia Sikander (b. 1969) has been on display in the West Court Gallery at Jesus College.
Conversation: An-My Lê and Shahzia Sikander
Thursday, July 22, 6 p.m.
Presented virtually on Zoom
Join exhibiting artists An-My Lê and Shahzia Sikander for a conversation about their artistic practices and Much Unseen is Also Here.
If you require special accommodations for this event, please contact mocp@colum.edu.
Register in advance and pay what you wish to join us on Zoom. Your contribution supports our dynamic public programs and events. Contribute here: giving.colum.edu/mocp
As a cautious world continues to reopen and a sense of normalcy begins to return to its art museums, a lively summer lineup of no-holds-barred exhibitions by and about queer artists is helping ensure that the imbalances exposed by the pandemic remain center stage, and that the urgency surrounding them isn’t lost. Highlighting themes such as activism, racism, ageism, ableism, innovation and intimacy, these shows help envision a future informed by past progress, but still mindful of present challenges and unafraid to keep evolving.
If it seems like forever since you visited any of Chicago’s many museums and cultural arts attractions, there’s no time like the present to check out all that the area has to offer. And with COVID-19 pandemic restrictions lifted, you can do so — in person.
So here’s a look at some of the exhibits waiting to be discovered (or rediscovered) by you, your friends, your family. The museums listed have reopened unless otherwise indicated. Most require advance tickets, so check websites for more information.
One year ago on July 4th, the skin of New York City art lovers was crawling. Sheltering in place with museums and galleries shut down, the community’s ability to see great art in person had been taken away. It was one of Covid-19’s lesser abuses, but a loss none the less to those for whom the arts are a lifeline.
One year later, the city’s museums and galleries are open, operating safely, welcoming visitors. Take advantage by channeling the art cravings of July 2020 into a full-on arts binge around New York this 4th.
Shahzia Sikander and will be in conversation with Glenn Lowry, Director of The Museum of Modern Art on the occasion of her exhibition Shahzia Sikander: Extraordinary Realities. The exhibition will be on view at The Morgan Library from June 18 through September 26, 2021. They will discuss Sikander's pioneering role in deconstructing Central and South Asian manuscript painting as a contemporary idiom.
ArtTable's Artist Talks Series is made possible by the Pollock Krasner Foundation. Originally formatted as in-person Artists Breakfasts, ArtTable has moved all programming into the virtual realm during the pandemic. Please join us for a virtual Artist Talk with Shahzia Sikander.
Shahzia will talk about individual works she created in 1988 to 2003, elaborating on the evolution of her unique visual lexicon as she negotiated a language between the pictoral traditions of Central and South Asia and contemporary practices, through the lens of her experience from Pakistan to the US as an immigrant pre and post 9/11 and how that period's shifting socio-political culture shaped her broader practice.
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L'Invitation au voyage
WITH WORKS BY SARAH BUCKNER, CUI JIE, CORDULA DITZ, ALMUT HEISE, HANNAH HÖCH, LEIKO IKEMURA, TALA MADANI, ISA MELSHEIMER, SOJOURNER TRUTH PARSONS, PAULA REGO, SHAHZIA SIKANDER, TSAI YI-TING, AND YEESOOKYUNG
Esther Schipper is pleased to present L’Invitation au voyage, an exhibition of painting on the long history of travelling in your imagination, through fantasy or dreams, and ideas of the body as site of projection, conduit and personal discovery.
From Shahzia Sikander at The Morgan to lyrical outdoor installations in Brooklyn by Chloë Bass
Much Unseen is Also Here, an initiative of Toward Common Cause, brings together the works of two major artists who both consider the theater of the landscape, monumentality, cultural history, and representation.
Probing monuments and identity, An-My Lê and Shahzia Sikander explore history’s embeddedness in our present. Lê’s Silent General (2015 - ongoing) presents large-scale views of places and people in the contemporary American landscape, while Sikander’s uses sculpture, drawings, and animation to examine representations of intersectional femininity that is prompted by questions of who monuments historically depict.
Join artist Shahzia Sikander for a virtual presentation and reading of her new children’s book, Roots and Wings: How Shahzia Sikander Became an Artist, co-authored with Amy Novesky and illustrated by Hanna Barczyk (available April 2021). Learn about Sikander’s inspirations and influences, and explore how her drawings, paintings, prints, mosaics, and animated films bring traditional artforms into dialogue with contemporary visual practices. Ask questions during a Q&A session.
Join the Department of Performance Studies in conversation about Sadia Abbas's novel, The Empty Room. Abbas will be joined by poet, fiction writer, critic, and translator John Keene and artist Shahzia Sikander.
This conversation will be moderated by Professor Fred Moten.
Examining through the lens of different disciplines, Twelve Gates Arts convenes three diasporic South Asian arts practitioners originally from Pakistan to ask the question: Who gets to tell the story of us?
Shahzia Sikander changed the game of the art world with her breakthrough at the Whitney Biennial in 1997. This year, Salman Toor, debuted his first solo museum exhibition at the Whitney, How Will I Know. In June, Sikander will open a career retrospective, Extraordinary Realities, at the Morgan Library & Museum co-organised with the RISD Museum. Centered on issues of gender, identity, global affiliations, appropriation, and narrative, this conversation engages the relationship between two artists on how they have navigated the shifting worlds of New York and Pakistan. In dialogue, we will pause and reflect over how we got here and anticipate where we are going.
Join the first Urgency of The Arts Assembly: I Need To Talk To You Urgently with guest speakers Abbas Zahedi, Legacy Russell, Shahzia Sikander & Tamu Nkiwane.
Each speaker, nominated by a current student from the School of Arts & Humanities at the RCA, will present an issue that is most important and most pressing to them right now.
Presentations will be followed by Q&A.
Pakistani American artist Shahzia Sikander (RISD MFA 1995, Painting and Printmaking) is internationally celebrated for bringing Indo-Persian miniature-painting traditions into dialogue with contemporary art practice. This exhibition tracks the first 15 years of this artistic journey, from her groundbreaking deconstruction of miniature 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.
Presented by the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, this new series,Radical Thinkers, places radical academics directly in conversation with trailblazing writers, poets, and artists, creating and nurturing two-way dialogues that will interrogate some of the most pressing issues facing Asian and Asian diasporic communities today. Featuring an interdisciplinary lineup of scholars and creatives, these unexpected pairings will center revolutionary discourse and scholarship in an effort to demystify intellectual debates, collapse the divide between the ‘ivory tower’ and the public sphere, and ultimately envision a radical new future.
The first installment of this series presents historian, professor, and AAWW Board Member Manan Ahmed in conversation with acclaimed visual artist Shahzia Sikander.
Virtual Gallery Tour and Artist Conversation with Dr. Ainsley M. Cameron and Jason Rosenfeld. In the first session of this program, Shahzia Sikander will lead a virtual tour of the exhibit and will be joined by Jason Rosenfeld for a conversation about the works in the show. Dr. Ainsley M. Cameron will lead a discussion with Shahzia in the second session where they will discuss themes of feminism in Sikander’s work.
Shahzia Sikander will be in conversation with the inimitable composer Du Yun, awarded the Pulitzer in Music in 2017, who wrote the musical score for all three films. Du Yun and Sikander’s decade-long collaborations span Shanghai, New York, Sharjah, Istanbul, Hong Kong, and Pakistan and speak to their ‘creative intimacy,’ female agency and shared passion for finding common ground through multiple languages.
Interesting. Unusual. Uniquely NYC. Highlights of this week’s top events include Weeping Willows, Liquid Tongues, Women to the Fore, Asia Society’s Triennial and more. Get the NYC-ARTS Top Five in your inbox every Friday and follow @NYC_ARTS on Instagram or @NYCARTS on Twitter to stay abreast of events as they happen.
SHAHZIA SIKANDER
Weeping Willows, Liquid Tongues
NOVEMBER 5 – DECEMBER 19, 2020
Artist Talk, Wednesday, September 30, 5:30pm
Details below
Sean Kelly is delighted to announce Shahzia Sikander’s inaugural exhibition with the gallery and her first exhibition in New York City in nine years. Weeping Willows, Liquid Tongues is an expansive, in-depth look into Sikander’s recent work, featuring the artist’s dynamic large-and-intimately-scaled drawings, a captivating new single channel video-animation, luminous, intricate mosaics and her first ever free-standing sculpture.
Please join Shahzia Sikander and Sean Kelly in conversation as they discuss Sikander’s inaugural exhibition at the gallery, the artist's career, working in a new medium and her forthcoming monograph and exhibitions at The Morgan Library, New York in June 2021 followed by the RISD Museum, Rhode Island in November 2021, and MFA Houston, Texas, Spring 2022.
There's a lot going on this week, from Julie Mehretu and Donald Judd shows, to a Wide Awakes panel at a virtual art fair.
Usually at this time of the year Park Avenue Armory shines with the extraordinary treasures shown during TEFAF New York. This year, the fall season in New York is inevitably quite different, with no fairs at Armory and less events and exhibitions around. Back in March, TEFAF in Maastricht was one of the very last European fairs happening in person, but they were eventually forced to close early due to coronavirus cases spreading and negative comments by dealers blasting the fair for allowing the risk of infections. Now, even the prestigious and long-running European Fine Art Fair in New York has gone virtual, and their quality this time was secured by a top-notch vetting process.
Each of the 300 exhibitors had to choose only one item to present–an artwork, design object, or exquisite jewel–resulting in a quite agile and very elegant online display you’ll be able to enjoy until Wednesday, November 4. Here are 10 stand-out treasures and treats we would love to have–also to sweeten this bitter fall.
With the days getting shorter, it feels especially important to sneak in a few bright spots of pleasure where you can. Below, we’ve assembled a list of 10 exhibitions that have stirred some insights and excitement. Like we did for our October guide, this month we’ve highlighted a mix of online and in-person exhibitions, many of which are by appointment. As always, stay safe and don’t forget your mask.
In 1994 Asia Society launched its contemporary art program with “Asia/America: Identities in Asian American Art,” a landmark exhibition that considered bicultural identity in the work of diasporic and Asian American artists living and working in the United States. A quarter-century later, this panel will reflect on the current playing field of artistic representation for Asian American and Asian diasporic artists in the United States and how these artists position themselves within a globalized art world. This conversation features artists Jordan Nassar and Shahzia Sikander and is moderated by Michelle Yun, senior curator, Asian contemporary art and associate director, Asia Society Triennial.
We are pleased to invite you the next artist talk of On Making, 2020 – a series that delves into the age-old query of “how do we make?” Tracing the different arcs of art and exhibition-making and how these might respond to the changing contours of tomorrow, we have with us this week a leading pioneer of neo-miniature herself – Shahzia Sikander.
Each week, we search New York City for the most exciting and thought-provoking shows, screenings, and events. In light of the global health crisis, we are currently highlighting events and digitally, as well as in-person exhibitions open in the New York area. See our picks from around the world below. (Times are all EST unless otherwise noted.)
Never Done: 100 Years of Women in Politics and Beyond takes the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment as the occasion for reflection and exploration of the issues and challenges women in the United States have faced, and continue to face, in politics and society.
What has been accomplished in the last 100 years, and what has yet to be accomplished?
The fight for the 19th amendment was achieved through marches, demonstrations, and protest tactics that are still used today. And in the current moment of protest and activism around racism in the United States, Never Donespeaks to the role of race and class in shaping women’s participation in politics and the public sphere.
One of the most pleasing side effects of the social-distancing era is the energy galleries are putting into sharing video art—a medium often marginalized at art fairs and even in IRL gallery spaces—with the public. Sean Kelly Gallery has launched a #FilmFridays series, in which it screens full-length video works on its Vimeo for free for 24 hours. This week’s film is Pakistani-American artist Shahzia Sikander’s Parallax, which presents animations made in collaboration with composer Du Yun that combine Indo-Persian miniature painting with abstraction. The film’s release coincides with what would have been the artist’s first New York gallery show in nine years. If you tune in, make sure to post a picture of your at-home screening setup and tag the gallery—the best environment will win a signed copy of a Sikander catalogue.
Each week, we search New York City for the most exciting and thought-provoking shows, screenings, and events. In light of the global health crisis, we are currently highlighting events and exhibitions available digitally. See our picks from around the world below. (Times are all EST unless otherwise noted.)
Ideas and Futures: A Collaborative for Just and Vibrant Societies is a non-profit dedicated to fostering collaborative, international intellectual and creative approaches to contemporary crises of polity, society, democracy and imagination in relation to ongoing struggles for dignity, freedom and sustainability. We believe that the humanities are vital to these discussions and advocate vigorously for their capacity to contribute to the most pressing social questions, urgencies and debates. We value and encourage experimental work that crosses boundaries of media, discipline and nations.
Explore the role of women in art and art history at the Cincinnati Art Museum through works from the museum’s permanent collection created from the seventeenth century to today. Art from across Europe, North America and Asia in a range of mediums will be featured together, including oil on canvas, metalwork, ceramic, prints, photography, and fashion. Prominent artists include Georgia O’Keeffe, Lorna Simpson, Kara Walker, Mary Cassatt, Julia Margaret Cameron, Elizabeth Catlett, and Chiyo Mitsuhisa. The exhibition will encourage visitors to think critically about gender, representation, and diversity and how that translates to the museum’s collecting practices and gallery installations.
Glitch brings together a group of international artists to explore the ways our understanding of the past, present and future is mediated through technology. The exhibit will span video art, digital paintings, photographs, multimedia installations, drawings, paintings and sculptures. Exhibited artists include VJ Um Amel (b. Alexandria, Egypt), Petra Cortright (b. Santa Barbara, United States), Shady El Noshokaty (b. Damietta, Egypt), Mounir Fatmi (b. Tangier, Morocco), Jonathon Hexner (b. Dhaka, Bangladesh), Pouran Jinchi (b. Mashhad, Iran), Basim Magdy (b. Assiut, Egypt), Haytham Nawar (b. Gharbiya, Egypt), Mona Omar (b. Cairo, Egypt), Kour Pour (b. Exeter, United Kingdom), Shahzia Sikander (b. Lahore, Pakistan) and Talisker (b. Paris, France).
The Annual Aleph Review Issue 4 was launched at the Lahore Literary Festival 2020, Featuring Shahzia Sikander's work Novice Thon from her 'Monks and Novices' Series (2006-2008) on the cover. This issue includes a dialogue with Shahzia Sikander and Sadia Abbas, The Scroll and the Empty Room.
After dark each night of the Festival, multiple sites along the Wellington waterfront will light up with an array of large-scale artworks.
Throughout history, public spaces have been the setting for both shared catharsis and collective imagination. Into the Open is a programme of moving-image artworks that will be projected along the waterfront throughout the Festival. Responding to the programmes curated by Lemi Ponifasio, Laurie Anderson and Bret McKenzie, this three-week series brings into the open artistic visions of what it means to be human, together.
Every Monday, the artworks will change to reflect the spirit of each Guest Curator’s vision, so come back each week to experience art in the open. Follow the pathway of artworks or linger with a moment painted large with light.
It is something new and a billion-dollar industry: fashion fashion. You may have never heard of it, you may already be wearing it. The Stedelijk Museum Schiedam is the first museum in the Netherlands to show this international fashion phenomenon with work by contemporary designers combined with contemporary art.
The creations of this vanguard are fashionable and covered. Women who do not want to participate in the 'aesthetics of being exposed' wear it, religious or not. Whereas the miniskirt was once seen as a feminist statement, now women want to be free and decide how to show themselves to the world: choose yourself! Modest fashion is therefore not about the question 'covered or not?', But about the freedom of choice and creativity of women around the world. The exhibition marks the 100-year anniversary of women's suffrage in the Netherlands and celebrates that 100 years ago the first woman came to the city council of Schiedam. Minister of Culture Ingrid van Engelshoven will perform the opening.
This presentation by Christiane Gruber explores a number of paintings of the Prophet Muhammad produced in Persian and Turkish lands from the fourteenth century to the modern-day. Ranging from veristic to abstract, these images represent Muhammad’s individual traits, primordial luminosity, and veiled essence. Their pictorial motifs reveal that artists engaged in abstract thought and turned to symbolic motifs in order to imagine Muhammad’s primordial origins and prophetic standing. In creating and gazing upon such images, artists and viewers also were inspired by various mystical beliefs and practices, including devotional invocation, in the process seeking to express their piety through both verbal and pictorial language. Within a variety of Islamic expressive cultures, paintings thus have functioned as a powerful means for devotional engagement with Muhammad, the “praiseworthy” Prophet and Messenger of Islam.
how the light gets in is an exhibition about the movement of people across the globe and the welcome cracks that develop in our notions of borders and nation states—“that’s how the light gets in,” Leonard Cohen sang in his 1992 song “Anthem”:
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in
The exhibition brings together an international group of 58 artists and artist teams and collectives, ranging in age from their twenties to their nineties and representing 29 countries of birth and residence. Their work engages with themes of migration, immigration, displacement, and exile. Artworks including drawing, photography, painting, sculpture, and video will be installed in all of the Museum’s temporary exhibition galleries, contemporary collection gallery, lobbies, and on the facade and grounds.
Dr. John Seyller, Professor of Art History at the University of Vermont, leads a gallery talk on the dynamic intersection of the tradition of Indian miniature painting and the contemporary videos of Shahzia Sikander, featured artist in Transcendent.
Shahzia Sikander merges the South Asian tradition of miniature painting with contemporary forms and styles, creating visually compelling, resonant works. Her multi-scaled imagery crosses boundaries of geography, religion, and style. Sikander earned her BFA from the National College of Arts in Lahore in 1992 and her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1995. She has exhibited nationally and internationally at venues such as the Pakistan Embassy in Washington, D.C.; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; the San Diego Museum of Art, California; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; and Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Germany. Sikander has received many accolades including the Asia Society Award for Significant Contribution to Contemporary Art (2015); MacArthur Fellowship (2006); Inaugural Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Creative Arts Fellowship, Italy (2009); Joan Mitchell Award (1998–99); Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award (1997); and the Shakir Ali Award from the National College of Arts, Lahore, Pakistan (1992). Shahzia Sikander currently resides in New York, NY where she is represented by Sean Kelly Gallery.
Sikander’s pioneering practice takes classical Indo-Persian miniature painting as its point of departure and challenges the strict formal tropes of the genre by experimenting with scale and various forms of new media. Trained as a miniaturist at the National College of Arts (NCA), Lahore, Sikander has developed a unique, critically charged approach to this time-honoured medium. Informed by South Asian, American, Feminist and Muslim perspectives, Sikander employs the miniature’s continuous capacity for reinvention to interrogate ideas of language, trade, empire, and migration. At the NCA, Sikander’s thesis project, the Scroll, launched what has come to be called the neo-miniature, and she was the first woman to teach miniature painting. H er works encompass painting, drawing, animation, installation, video and film. Shahzia Sikander has previously shown at the Aga Khan Museum as part of “Nuit Blanche” (2017) and “Listening to Art, Seeing Music” (2018).
“Highlights 2012-2019” is the first retrospective of Fanoon Center For Printmedia Research’s growing collection of international and regional artists including Bryan Graf, Bryan Jabs, Chloe Lum and Yannick Desranleau, Diyan Achjadi, Fares Cachoux, Jenny Schmid, John D. Freyer, Katie Vida, Koichi Yamamoto, Las Hermanas Iglesias, Mary Laube, Michael Perrone, Ranjani Shettar, Sean Kuhnke, Shahzia Sikander, Shaurya Kumar, Sonya Clark, Susan Chrysler White and Trenton Doyle Hancock.
Transcendent presents a selection of artists who explore or evoke themes of spirituality through their work. Challenging the unspoken taboo of representing the divine or faith in contemporary art, Transcendent aims to connect art and creative practice with the meditative or the sacred. Drawing from diverse traditions, the works in this exhibition reflect on questions of human nature, cultural identity, and sanctity in everyday life. Through a variety of approaches these artists seek a greater purpose in their work and a way to connect with the world. Featuring nationally and internationally recognized artists, Transcendent includes works by Anila Quayyum Agha, Leonardo Benzant, Maïmouna Guerresi, Shahzia Sikander, Sandy Sokoloff, Shelley Warren, and Zarina.
BCA Exhibitions are funded in part by a grant from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, and Vermont Arts Council.
The Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in Providence, Rhode Island, has appointed six new trustees: contemporary artist, designer, and activist Shepard Fairey; Gabrielle Bullock, a principal at the Los Angeles–based firm Perkins & Will and the second African American woman to graduate from the school’s architecture program; the Pakistani-born printer and printmaker Shahzia Sikander; Norman Chan, the founder and managing director of the architectural and interior design firm BTR Workshop Limited in Hong Kong; Michael Rock, the cofounder of the New York City design consultancy 2x4; and William Schweizer III, the vice chairman of clinical affairs at NYU Langone Health’s department of obstetrics and gynecology in New York City.
Shepard Fairey, Gabrielle Bullock, Shahzia Sikander, Norman Chan, Michael Rock and William Schweizer to serve as Term Trustees; Donald Choi, Deborah Mankiw named Ex Officio Trustees
PROVIDENCE, RI, - The Board of Trustees at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) is proud to announce the election of Shepard Fairey, Gabrielle Bullock, Shahzia Sikander, Norman Chan, Michael Rock and William Schweizer as its newest term trustees. Each will serve a three-year term through May 2022.
“The Board is thrilled to welcome to RISD this new group of esteemed trustees, which includes several extraordinary alumni,” said RISD Board Chair Michael Spalter . “Our newest members embody RISD’s values and they have each made indelible marks on society. We look forward to the ways they will help guide our illustrious institution alongside our visionary President Rosanne Somerson, and we thank them for taking on this important commitment in service to RISD.”
The Lahore Literary Festival (LLF), one of South Asia’s premier cultural events, returns to Asia Society New York for the third year. LLF in New York will explore contemporary Pakistan through artists, writers, and commentators. The festival will present American audiences with a more nuanced view of Pakistan and include discussions on fiction and nonfiction writing, art, architecture, history and politics.
Malala expresses to David Letterman the importance of fighting against the ideologies that counteract women's equality. Watch My Next Guest Needs No Introduction With David Letterman on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/80209096
A provocative, unprecedented anthology featuring original short stories on what it means to be an American from thirty bestselling and award-winning authors with an introduction by Pulitzer Prize–winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen: “This chorus of brilliant voices articulating the shape and texture of contemporary America makes for necessary reading” (Lauren Groff, author of Fates and Furies).
On Thursday December 7, UBS will release new findings on the habits of art collectors and their implications in an Investor Watch Pulse Survey
Artwork presentation in the UBS lounge in Miami Beach will showcase UBS Art Collection artist Shahzia Sikander
Sikander, Rick Lowe and Julie Mehretu (RISD MFA ’97) will discuss the cultural landscape from the 1990’s to present day and their part in shaping it. The friends will develop a dialogue about artists supporting artists, collaborations, mentoring, and what lies ahead.
On Friday November 10 at 7 pm, join artist Shahzia Sikander in conversation with Sadia Abbas moderated by Richard Davis as the opening event of Lahore on my Mind, a public festival that moves between the past and the present to explore the early modern, colonial, and contemporary cultural worlds of South Asia.
Biennales held all across the World (amounting to a physical sum prestige of over 100 cities so far) play an important role in connecting forlorn landscapes with their shrouded history of arts and culture in order to help build a more inspired and creative society, giving people a sense of who they are and where they’ve come from. The Karachi Biennale 2017 (KB17), a project of the Karachi Biennale Trust (KBT) comprising of a group of diligent curators, art educators and professional enthusiasts, drew to a close on Sunday after two weeks of art exhibits used to bring together diverse communities of the metropolis.
The Karachi Biennale 2017 (KB17) is Pakistan’s largest international contemporary art event set to feature on a holistically large scale platform every two years in Karachi. Beginning this year on October 22, over 160 national and international artists from 34 countries around the globe responded to a common theme: WITNESS – seeking to engage the public by use of art as a lens to conceptualize the city and its concerns. Whether it was the performances at the Frere Hall, or visits to the 12 chosen venues turned into free and public art spaces across the city, the diverse audience of spectators was excited to be a part of a series of discursive sessions that helped them experience culture in an open, secure and engaging environment.
Shahzia Sikander will be one of many speakers at the 7th Biennial Hamad bin Khalifa Symposium on Islamic Art on Nov. 2-4 in Richmond, Virginia.
The Art of Independence: Visions of the Future in India and Pakistan A conference held at at the Ashmolean Museum on 12 October 2017 and the Courtauld Institute of Art on 13 October 2017, convened by Faisal Devji and Mallica Kumbera Landrus (University of Oxford) with Deborah Swallow and Zehra Jumabhoy (The Courtauld Institute of Art, London). The conference was co-organised by the Ashmolean Museum, the Courtauld Institute of Art—Sackler Research Forum, the Oxford Centre for Global History and the Asian Studies Centre of St Antony’s College, and co-funded by the Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development of Somerville College, the John Fell Fund, the Radhakrishnan Fund, the University Engagement Programme (funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation), and the Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities. Day 2, Futures Lost and Found: Citizenship and Contemporary Art (The Courtauld Institute of Art, London) Shahzia Sikander in conversation with Faisal Devji
Lucid Dreams and Distant Visions: South Asian Art in the Diaspora, organized by Asia Society Museum with the support of the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, considers the work of nineteen contemporary artists from the South Asian diaspora who explore notions of home and issues relating to migration, gender, race, and memory across mediums and aesthetics. These artists represent a microcosm of the American experience and their respective practices across four decades have collectively made a significant impact on the development of contemporary art in the United States.
Featured artists: Jaishri Abichandani, Anila Quayyum Agha, Mequitta Ahuja, Rina Banerjee, Khalil Chishtee, Ruby Chishti, Allan deSouza, Chitra Ganesh, Mariam Ghani, Vandana Jain, Gautam Kansara, Annu Palakunnathu Matthew, Naeem Mohaiemen, Kanishka Raja, Tenzing Rigdol, Shahzia Sikander, Jaret Vadera, Palden Weinreb, and Zarina.
A three- day convening of established and mid career South Asian American artists, academics and curators. Fatal Love: Where Are We Now? examines contemporary art production by artists, academics and curators in the South Asian American diaspora. Although we have had a strong presence in the New York art world for the last two decades, we have yet to engage in a nationwide dialogue. A lack of institutional support and scarcity of full time contemporary art South Asian curators employed in any local museums have prevented generations of artists from forming networks that go beyond the local to a national scale.
Shahzia Sikander, the Pakistani-American artist whose works delves into drawing, painting, animation, installation, performance, and video, has signed on to show with Sean Kelly Gallery in New York. She will figure prominently in the gallery’s booth at the Armory Show next week, with longer-range plans including a solo exhibition at the Chelsea gallery, to be presented in late 2017 or early 2018.
On September 8, Shahzia Sikander will speak at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, launching the new season of the Mark and Mary Goff Fiterman Lecture Series.
Thursday, February 4, 2016
Shahzia Sikander will participate in a panel discussion on women in printmaking at the New York Public Library's Schwarzman Building on February 4, 2016, 6pm. The event will begin with cocktails and include a tour of the library's current exhibition, chronicling women in printmaking from 1570 to 1900.
The panel will be moderated by Anne Higonnet, Ann Whitney Olin Professor in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Barnard. The discussion will also include Pace Prints collaborator April Gornik and Dana Schutz.
Sikander is currently working on her first print edition with Pace Prints, to be published this spring.
Asia Society Art Gala is the signature event during the week of Art Basel in Hong Kong. Major art collectors from the region, artists, gallerists, dignitaries from the art world, and Asia Society Trustees and patrons will gather to honor artists Shahzia Sikander, Do Ho Suh, Wucius Wong, and Xu Bing for their significant contributions to contemporary art.
All proceeds from the Asia Society Art Gala will support Asia Society initiatives worldwide. Asia Society’s Art Gala is co-organized by Asia Society Museum New York and Asia Society Hong Kong Center.
Lisbon, Portugal, 6 September 2013 - His Excellency Aníbal Cavaco Silva, President of the Portuguese Republic, and His Highness the Aga Khan today presented the Aga Khan Awards for Architecture at the Castle of São Jorge in Lisbon.
"In my line of work, we often talk about the art of diplomacy as we try to make people’s lives a little better around the world. But, in fact, art is also a tool of diplomacy. It reaches beyond governments, past the conference rooms and presidential palaces, to help us connect with more people in more places. It is a universal language in our search for common ground, an expression of our shared humanity.
That’s why Art in Embassies is so important. The Museum of Modern Art first envisioned this global visual-arts program in 1953, and President John F. Kennedy formalized it at the U.S. Department of State in 1963. Working with over 20,000 participants globally, including artists, museums, collectors, and galleries, this laNewsndmark public-private partnership shares the work of more than 4,000 American and international artists annually in more than 200 U.S. Embassies and Consulates around the world. These can be exhibitions, permanent collections, site-specific commissions, or two-way artist exchanges. Many remarkable artists have been involved with Art in Embassies, and this year we were proud to award the first biennial U.S. Department of State Medal of Arts to Cai Guo-Qiang, Jeff Koons, Shahzia Sikander, Kiki Smith, and Carrie Mae Weems." - Hillary Clinton