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Shahzia Sikander

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Shahzia Sikander (Pakistani-American, b. Lahore 1969)

Facing the Shadow, 2019/2025

ink, gouache and gold on paper

paper: 15 x 11 1/4 inches (38.1 x 28.6 cm)

signed by the artist, verso

(ShS-WP.19.060)

 

Provenance:

The artist and Sean Kelly, New York/Los Angeles.

 

Exhibitions:

Jesus College Cambridge, Shahzia Sikander: Unbound, England, October 16, 2021 - February 18, 2022.* 

Sean Kelly, New York, Shahzia Sikander: Weeping Willows, Liquid Tongues, November 5 – December 19, 2020.*

* earlier (2019) version of the work exhibited

Shahzia Sikander (Pakistani-American, b. Lahore 1969)

Facing the Shadow, 2019/2025

ink, gouache and gold on paper

paper: 15 x 11 1/4 inches (38.1 x 28.6 cm)

signed by the artist, verso

(ShS-WP.19.060)

 

Provenance:

The artist and Sean Kelly, New York/Los Angeles.

 

Exhibitions:

Jesus College Cambridge, Shahzia Sikander: Unbound, England, October 16, 2021 - February 18, 2022.* 

Sean Kelly, New York, Shahzia Sikander: Weeping Willows, Liquid Tongues, November 5 – December 19, 2020.*

* earlier (2019) version of the work exhibited

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Shahzia Sikander (Pakistani-American, b. Lahore 1969)

Squaring the Shadow, 2019/2025

ink, gouache and gold on paper

paper: 15 x 11 1/4 inches (38.1 x 28.6 cm)

signed by the artist, verso

(ShS-WP.19.061)

 

Provenance:

The artist and Sean Kelly, New York/Los Angeles.

 

Exhibitions:

Jesus College Cambridge, England, Shahzia Sikander: Unbound, October 16, 2021 - February 18, 2022.* 

Sean Kelly, New York, Shahzia Sikander: Weeping Willows, Liquid Tongues, November 5 – December 19, 2020.*

* earlier (2019) version of the work exhibited

Shahzia Sikander (Pakistani-American, b. Lahore 1969)

Squaring the Shadow, 2019/2025

ink, gouache and gold on paper

paper: 15 x 11 1/4 inches (38.1 x 28.6 cm)

signed by the artist, verso

(ShS-WP.19.061)

 

Provenance:

The artist and Sean Kelly, New York/Los Angeles.

 

Exhibitions:

Jesus College Cambridge, England, Shahzia Sikander: Unbound, October 16, 2021 - February 18, 2022.* 

Sean Kelly, New York, Shahzia Sikander: Weeping Willows, Liquid Tongues, November 5 – December 19, 2020.*

* earlier (2019) version of the work exhibited

Inquire
Shahzia Sikander (Pakistani-American, b. Lahore 1969)

Facing the Shadow, 2019/2025

ink, gouache and gold on paper

paper: 15 x 11 1/4 inches (38.1 x 28.6 cm)

signed by the artist, verso

(ShS-WP.19.060)

 

Provenance:

The artist and Sean Kelly, New York/Los Angeles.

 

Exhibitions:

Jesus College Cambridge, Shahzia Sikander: Unbound, England, October 16, 2021 - February 18, 2022.* 

Sean Kelly, New York, Shahzia Sikander: Weeping Willows, Liquid Tongues, November 5 – December 19, 2020.*

* earlier (2019) version of the work exhibited

Shahzia Sikander (Pakistani-American, b. Lahore 1969)

Facing the Shadow, 2019/2025

ink, gouache and gold on paper

paper: 15 x 11 1/4 inches (38.1 x 28.6 cm)

signed by the artist, verso

(ShS-WP.19.060)

 

Provenance:

The artist and Sean Kelly, New York/Los Angeles.

 

Exhibitions:

Jesus College Cambridge, Shahzia Sikander: Unbound, England, October 16, 2021 - February 18, 2022.* 

Sean Kelly, New York, Shahzia Sikander: Weeping Willows, Liquid Tongues, November 5 – December 19, 2020.*

* earlier (2019) version of the work exhibited

Shahzia Sikander (Pakistani-American, b. Lahore 1969)

Squaring the Shadow, 2019/2025

ink, gouache and gold on paper

paper: 15 x 11 1/4 inches (38.1 x 28.6 cm)

signed by the artist, verso

(ShS-WP.19.061)

 

Provenance:

The artist and Sean Kelly, New York/Los Angeles.

 

Exhibitions:

Jesus College Cambridge, England, Shahzia Sikander: Unbound, October 16, 2021 - February 18, 2022.* 

Sean Kelly, New York, Shahzia Sikander: Weeping Willows, Liquid Tongues, November 5 – December 19, 2020.*

* earlier (2019) version of the work exhibited

Shahzia Sikander (Pakistani-American, b. Lahore 1969)

Squaring the Shadow, 2019/2025

ink, gouache and gold on paper

paper: 15 x 11 1/4 inches (38.1 x 28.6 cm)

signed by the artist, verso

(ShS-WP.19.061)

 

Provenance:

The artist and Sean Kelly, New York/Los Angeles.

 

Exhibitions:

Jesus College Cambridge, England, Shahzia Sikander: Unbound, October 16, 2021 - February 18, 2022.* 

Sean Kelly, New York, Shahzia Sikander: Weeping Willows, Liquid Tongues, November 5 – December 19, 2020.*

* earlier (2019) version of the work exhibited

Shahzia Sikander - TEFAF -  - Viewing Room - Sean Kelly Gallery - Online Exhibition

Shahzia Sikander

Perilous Order. 1997

Vegetable pigment, dry pigment, watercolor, and tea water on paper

10 3/8 x 8 3/16 inches

Permanent Collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. 

Listen to audioguide about this work from MoMA exhibition Without Boundary: Seventeen Ways of Looking, 2006.

Shahzia Sikander frequently depicts female figures with root-like appendages rather than arms and legs. Since its inception in 1993, this powerful visual motif has evolved in meaning across her multidisciplinary practice. Dating to her early years at the Rhode Island School of Design (1993–1995), Sikander’s rooted female figures often appeared headless, a deliberate choice that emphasizes themes of displacement and erasure. Iconic earlier examples of this imagery include A Slight and Pleasing Dislocation, 1993, Perilous Order, 1997, and Elusive Realities, 2000. Sikander’s evocative titles hint at narrative undercurrents of her work, often drawing on revolutionary texts, feminist poetry, and diaristic reflections.

Shahzia Sikander - TEFAF -  - Viewing Room - Sean Kelly Gallery - Online Exhibition

Shahzia Sikander

A Slight and Pleasing Dislocation, 1993

Gouache and gesso on board

26 9/16 x 14 9/16 inches

The more recent appearance of the head on these rooted figures marks a shift from an examination of displacement to an expression of empowerment, mirroring the evolution of the artist’s own journey as an immigrant in the United States. These figures embody what Sikander calls “Migrant Love,” a term she uses to describe the central protagonists in her work. This iconography can be found elsewhere in Sikander’s practice, including a version in stained glass for the 2024 Venice Biennale exhibition Collective Behavior at the Palazzo Soranzo van Axel. The exhibition is now on view at the Cincinnati Art Museum and Cleveland Museum of Art through June 2025 and will travel to the Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University in September 2025.

In this context, Facing the Shadow and Squaring the Shadow suggest a direct confrontation—a reckoning with what is hidden, uncomfortable, or difficult to name. As Sikander notes, “These figures are autonomous and interconnected, self-rooted and migratory, vulnerable and resilient, visible yet invisible.” With drawing as the connective tissue in her practice, Sikander allows space for her artwork to inhabit multiple meanings, often as a way of affirming how women, deeply rooted in their identities and cultural heritage, cannot be easily uprooted or silenced.

"At a time when destructive origin myths are once again on the rise, I aspire for multivalence. I aim to create something wondrous that inspires many possible associations, invites profound reflection, and generates difference."

- Shahzia Sikander

Shahzia Sikander - TEFAF -  - Viewing Room - Sean Kelly Gallery - Online Exhibition

Photo by Vincent Tullo

For more than three decades, Shahzia Sikander (born 1969, Pakistan) has been animating South Asian visual histories through a contemporary perspective. Her work reimagines the past for our present moment, proposing new narratives that cross time and place. Working in a variety of mediums—paintings, drawings, prints, digital animations, mosaics, sculpture, and glass—Sikander considers Western relations with the global south and the wider Islamic world, often through the lens of gender and body politics. Her work is rooted in a lexicon of recurring motifs that makes visible marginalized subjects. At times turning the lens inward, Sikander reflects on her own experience as an immigrant and diasporic artist working in the United States.

Sikander earned a B.F.A. in 1991 from the National College of Arts in Lahore, Pakistan. Her seminal thesis work, The Scroll, 1989–1990, which initiated the start of the neo-miniature movement, garnered awards, exhibitions and press, and led to increased enrollment in the NCA’s miniature painting department. Subsequently, Sikander was appointed lecturer in miniature painting at the school. The artist moved to the United States to pursue an M.F.A. at the Rhode Island School of Design from 1993 to 1995; from 1995 to 1997, she participated in the Glassell School of Art’s CORE Program at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. A recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship (2006) and the State Department Medal of Arts (2012), Sikander’s innovative work has been exhibited and collected internationally.

A major new outdoor project, an 8-foot bronze female sculpture, is currently on the roof of the Appellate Courthouse in Manhattan. An accompanying 18-foot female sculpture was exhibited in Madison Square Park in 2023 and traveled to the University of Houston in 2024. Every midnight in September 2023, Sikander’s animation, Reckoning, 2020, unfolded across the screens of Times Square. Projects with the Moynihan Train Hall Public Art Program saw her animation Singing Suns, 2016, displayed across screens in Moynihan Train Hall from November 2023 to January 2024. A survey exhibition of Sikander’s work, Collective Behavior, opened in Venice during the Biennale Arte 2024 and was co-organized by the Cincinnati Art Museum and Cleveland Museum of Art. The exhibitions in Cleveland and Cincinnati opened in February 2025. The exhibition will travel to the Cantor Arts Center in September 2025.