“Time is the Key”
Born in 1969 in Pakistan, Shahzia Sikander is a Pakistani-American artist that has immense “respect for tradition.” The majority of her pieces have “a certain energy that comes out.” Sikander contains a certain transparency that juxtaposes the ideas of revealing and veiling. She also has dualities in her artwork that she produces – creating large-scale installations as well as miniature paintings. In her small paintings she pairs Islamic text with image to make the audience think about the ideas of reading versus understanding. “Beauty of the word supersedes everything else.”
In the classroom, Sikander can be used to talk about the importance of individual culture in people’s artwork. The importance of her process could also be discussed. For class projects, students could either create large-scale installations throughout the school or create page spreads pairing image and text for strictly visual pleasure. Students could learn the “formal sensibility of painting,” “respect for tradition,” and how to create juxtapositions of understanding concepts for their intended audiences.
All quotes in this passage come from her Art21 episode.
Sarah Kedzior 