Crossing The Bridge

Praise in the US is not enough for Shazia Sikander, who wants her art to bridge the great divide between India and Pakistan, says kuhu singh

It took quite a while for Shazia Sikander to cross the bridge of acceptance into the American art world. It started with her being known only as a painter from Pakistan which slowly broadened into her being seen as an artist from South Asia, then Asian and finally as a contemporary American artist with a following of her own. A television documentary on artists in America currently under way includes her name alongside the likes of contemporary artists like Bruce Norman, Cindy Sherman and Richard Serra.

From the prestigious Whitney Museum of American Art in New York to the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C., Sikander’s works have been seen and acknowledged as a rising influence in the American art scene, both by the critics and by the audience. Winner of numerous awards including the Joan Mitchell Award, The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award and the South Asian Women’s Creative Collective Achievement Award, Sikander has represented America thrice at the Asia-Pacific Biennial in Australia.

‘‘America is all about labels and categories,’’ says this 31-year-old miniature artist who made this country her home since she was 22 and just out of college (National College of Arts, Lahore).

She applied for and was accepted into the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design for her Masters in Fine Arts and after that decided to stay on. A residency in Austin, Texas for two years was followed up with a stint at the famous Drawing Centre in New York’s SoHo district and later with Deitch Projects, also in NYC.

At first the labels bothered her. It rankled her that she was primarily seen as a representative of a race, her work, miniatures, seen as a daubing into a tradition long gone. ‘‘It started right from Grad School,’’ Sikander recalls narrating an incident when on the first day itself a faculty member asked her why she was there.

‘Are you trying to make East meet West?’ he said. ‘‘Needless to say, I was offended. I was there because of my own curiosity, I wanted to grow. I came with a traditional practice, but I wanted to learn other practices too.’’ It was also difficult to describe her work, to explain what she was doing because the audience here was not familiar with miniatures; they found it too culturally specific and reflective of what art was back home. ‘‘The feedback never went beyond who I am,’’ she said.

But Sikander is also quick to acknowledge that coming to the US also meant more creative freedom for an artist to grow ‘‘while back home one had to keep working, quite often isolated, within an insular framework of creativity. But here one is constantly on a public platform, open to criticism which in turn means a lot of responsibility on the artist,’’ Sikander says. Sikander’s interest in miniatures goes back to her college days when she attended a slide show by a visiting British curator Robert Skelton (Albert Museum, London) on Mughal miniatures.
‘‘Earlier, I saw Indian miniatures purely as aesthetic pieces but my interest was aroused after the show. I wanted to know more. Incidentally, Sikander’s alma mater in Lahore is the only college of its kind in the entire sub-continent that has specific department dedicated to miniature art. She joined the department and the interest that developed more like an art historian, grew on to much more. Sikander wanted to experiment and an invitation by the Pakistan embassy in US for a group show in 1992 opened up the path for that kind of exploration.

Sikander’s works has been described as modernity in miniatures, the oldest and richest figurative painting tradition in the Middle East, Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent. But her work is not a revival or continuation of the pre-colonial miniature. Nor is it subversive to tradition since her mixture of Christian, Persian, Hindu and Muslim codes is not homogeneous. At times, she has produced works, which quite faithfully reference specific schools of the miniature tradition. Yet,at other times she has introduced modernist practices as collage and abstractions into the space of the miniatures dealing with her own experiences and issues around.

Sikander hasn’t had a show in Pakistan since she left the country some nine years ago. But she wants to, in India as well, through collaborative projects.
‘‘Today, I’m more secure as a person and as an artist because I’m not completely cut off from my roots. I’m reminded constantly of who I am through my works and through my family back home, which enriches both me and my work,’’ she said.
The artist is obviously comfortable straddling the two worlds of her choice.

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