"I'm interested in taking a form, breaking it apart, and then rebuilding it. It is about transformation for me… it is a very core notion that stabilizes my practice."
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This week we are featuring three works on paper from 1997 by the contemporary artist Shahzia Sikander.
Over the last 20 years Sikander has been a key figure in the reinvention of South Asian miniature painting, placing it within a global, interdisciplinary practice. Trained at the National College of Arts in Lahore, she blends traditional techniques with drawing, painting, animation, and installation to explore themes of identity, migration, power, and history. Her work challenges colonial narratives and expands the language of miniature painting into a dynamic, contemporary form.
- A Kind of Slight and Pleasing Dislocation, 1997, Hosfelt Gallery, 1997
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The three works were acquired by an American collector from Hosfelt Gallery in San Francisco and were exhibited in Sikander's 1997 solo-exhibition A Kind of Slight and Pleasing Dislocation
"There was an installation of about 100 drawings in acrylic on yellow tracing paper. In each of them, she experimented with some basic themes, repeating and transmuting the imagery until it evolved into the iconography that has been the basis for her visual vocabulary ever since. They were layered and pinned with long "specimen" pins, directly to the walls. They fluttered a little bit in the drafts people created as they walked by. We sold them for $200 each."
Install images and text kindly supplied by Todd Hosfeldt, from the blog - A Gallerist's Musings
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‘Collective Behaviour’ at Palazzo Soranzo van Axel, Venice (2024)
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The last few years have featured numerous highlights for the artist, including the opening leg of her solo-show Collective Behaviour at Palazzo Soranzo van Axel in Venice. This exhibition was then shown at the Cleveland Museum of Art, with another concurrently running at the Cincinnati Art Museum in spring 2025.
The exhibition is currently on display at Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University until the end of January 2026.
The catalogue for that exhibition is available to buy from this link.
Sikander’s work is also currently on display in Ravenna, Italy as part of the exhibition ‘Breath’, and her work ‘The Last Post’ can be seen at the Smithsonian Museum until July 2026 – an edition of which was shown at the Glynn Vivian Museum’s exhibition Tigers and Dragons, India and Wales in Britain in 2025.
Sikander’s large public installation Disruption as Rapture is also currently on display at the National Museum in Oslo.
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Fact Sheet:
Shahzia SIKANDER b. 1969
Untitled (Water), 1997
Untitled (Three Trees), 1997
Untitled (Rectilinear Forms), 1997
Each signed 'Shazia'
Watercolour and gouache on rice paper
(i) 12 1/4 x 13 3/4 in. (31.1 x 34.9 cm)
(ii) 10 x 15 1/4 in. (25.4 x 38.7 cm)
(iii) 14 1/2 x 19 1/2 in. (36.8 x 49.5 cm)Provenance:
Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco;
Private US collection
Exhibited:
San Francisco, Hosfelt Gallery, A Kind of Slight and Pleasing Dislocation, 1997
