SHAHZIA SIKANDER (B. 1969)

“Miniature painting, at least at school, was offered as a place of experimentation. So again, when you think about it as this traditional art form, you tend to bring all this baggage that you’re dealing with, a very specific way of working. But when you are offered miniature painting at a school, it’s a place of experimentation. Not too much and not too little—it was controlled. You weren’t free to just do whatever. You still had to work within a certain set of rules. So, there was no particular break from tradition, and yet my whole purpose of taking on the subject was to break the tradition, to experiment with it, to find new ways of making meaning, to question the relevance of it. So, the intention was that.” (Artist statement, ‘Islam and Miniature Painting’, Art21, November 2011, accessed April 2019)

Please see lot 66 for full discussion on Shahzia Sikander and the Art of Pakistan.