A Contemporary Spin on Eastern Miniature Painting (Shahzia Sikander) | Art21

SHAHZIA SIKANDER:
There's something about the process,

the miniature process of painting 
in this scale, primarily,

which keeps it in control.

I'm basically staining the paper

and it has to be a very even stain.

It's slow. and you have to keep the edge

of the tea really, sort of, always in flow

so that you just drip the 
whole edge down steadily.

It's very meditative,

and there's a sense of familiarity

because a lot of years have gone in here.

(scraping)

One thing I've learned is respect for tradition

and respect for patience,

because you just cannot achieve anything,

like you can't achieve a painting if you don't...

Like you need time. Time is the key.

So I can't, like, do a show

and prepare a body of work in a year.

I need three to four years.

(bells ringing)

Miniature painting, you know,

comes out of book illustration, 
manuscript, painting.

It's an old art form.

All the strange piled up, stacked up perspective,

interior spaces and then 
suggestions of windows and doors,

which suggest the outside 
world or the spiritual world,

or some notion of perfection.

That kind of jewel-like, 
translucency that comes through

is only because you have a discipline behind it.

It takes many, many layers,

at least like 10 to 20 layers of different color,

to build it up.

And you have to be very careful,

because if your brush is 
loaded with too much water,

you lift off the earlier layers of pigment also,

'Cause they're not sealed.

So, it's practice.

Sometimes, like when I'm not in practice,

all the 10 years of experience 
doesn't mean a thing.

But when we were studying in school in Pakistan,

my teacher used to have us sit 
on the floor on white sheets

and you get to leave your shoes outside.

And everything was very precise and very clean

and very minimum.

And you worked on your work 
and you did eye exercises.

You kept your work at least 
a foot away from your eyes.

And it was very methodical.

it had a very sort of...

It was very ritualistic also.

(Bells ringing)

I feel like acquiring a 
miniature painting early on...

For me, it was painting.

I was looking and understanding

the formal sensibility of painting,

except I was not painting on canvas.

And I was painting on paper

with a particular set of material,

but it was all about surface, palette, form,

composition, stylization.

And self-expression came later.

(bells ringing)

A lot of my work is deeply personal

and is drawn out of memory.

If you look at this particular border,

it's called riding the written 
and here the text becomes

more like horses or there's 
a suggestion of movement.

And that aspect is my 
experience of reading the Quran,

where I would read it with 
no particular understanding

because I was a child and I could read Arabic,

but I couldn't understand it.

And the memory of it is this amazing visual memory

where the beauty of the written word

supersedes everything else.

The meaning is there, but 
it's not just the meaning.

It's the ability of the written 
text to take you to that

other level.

(bells ringing)

My whole purpose of taking on miniature painting

was to break the tradition, to experiment with it,

to find new ways of making meaning

and to question the relevance of it.

(paper crinkling)
The starting point in all my work,

whether it's small or it's large,

actually begins as simple drawings,

which are done on transparent tissue paper.

A lot of the images that exist 
in my work were happening

because I was interested

in subverting Hindu

with Muslim and Muslim with Hindu.

Having grown up as a Muslim in Pakistan,

I didn't have much information 
about Hindu mythology.

And when I came here,

I realized that these were the things

which still interested me.

And I was looking at the 
idea of the Hindu goddess,

but it didn't matter how many hands it had.

Just the notion that it was the female body

with several hands was important.

But the goddess has a very specific face.

And here I was dripping off the face and,

and putting, like, a 
headdress-like veil on top of it.

And yet the veil is on top of a Hindu goddess,

not to underestimate what's behind the veil.

The minute you bring the 
word veil into the equation,

it kind of connects you to a Muslim identity

or a woman's identity.

And these are very loaded issues to take on

because anything and everything 
associated with Islam

is either terrorism...

<v ->Um-Hm.</v>
...or oppression for women.

Culturally, it's not, you know, my experience.

My grandparents, my parents, everybody was very,

very progressive, very supportive people.

My grandfather was very encouraging

towards careers for women, with everybody.

All the girls in the family.

They did something with their lives.

<v ->But then I was not keen.</v>

If she's going to the National College of Arts,

then she might as well do 
architecture, which has scope.

You know? And like, you know, 
when she said fine arts,

one was a bit, you know...

At the most, you just hang a 
few paintings in the house,

whether you have a future or not.

(laughing)
That was so rude.

<v ->So I was skeptical about that.</v>

(forklift whirring)

<v ->This type of work for me</v>

was, like, just the opposite

of the process of doing miniature painting.

(paper sliding)

This particular installation 
is much, much more spontaneous.

And it's always a challenge

because the decisions made are fast.

It involves my entire body.

It's like I'm working within 
the space and I'm up and down,

you know, the ladders and I'm like painting.

And then, everything kind 
of happens from start to end

within like four, five days.

So, there's a certain energy which comes out.

There is a certain sense of a little relief.

Where several drawings have 
been hung on top of each other,

there's no intention to hide anything.

Everything is very visible. 
The paper is transparent.

It floats, it moves.

The idea, you know, comes out 
of this whole relationship

to veiling and revealing.

I'm always taking photographs, doing sketches

or taking notes.

And then, I carry them wherever I go.

I brought so much stuff from Pakistan

and then so much stuff from Texas.

And then, every time I sit to do some work,

all of it is opened up.

For me, it's always like these divine circles.

You know, you go and you experience something

and then you come back right where you started.

When I'm working large and 
I paint and I do murals,

the next thing is always, I 
come back to miniature painting.

I can hate miniature for a while

because it's frustrating

because for all the different reasons

of doing something so labor intensive, you know,

which takes years to make.

So it's like always, "Why do I do this?"

And I let go and I do something else,

but I always come back to it.

And maybe because by the sheer act of doing it

is what gives me certain sort of...

you know, peace.

(soft piano music)