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

Art21 proudly presents an artist segment, featuring Shahzia Sikander, from the "Spirituality" episode in Season 1 of the "Art in the Twenty-First Century" series.

"Spirituality" premiered in September 2001 on PBS.

Trained in the challenging discipline of Indian and Persian miniature painting, Shahzia Sikander has adapted an enduring artistic tradition to the task of questioning and exploring her Eastern heritage, its boundaries, and its liberating possibilities.

Shahzia Sikander was born in 1969 in Lahore, Pakistan. Learn more about the artist at: https://art21.org/artist/shahzia-sikander.

CREDITS
Created by: Susan Sollins & Susan Dowling. Executive Producer & Curator: Susan Sollins. Executive Producer: Susan Dowling. Series Producer: Eve-Laure Moros Ortega. Associate Producer: Migs Wright. Production Coordinator: Laura Recht. Researcher: Quinn Latimer & Wesley Miller. Director: Deborah Shaffer. Editor: Kate Taverna. Director of Photography: Bob Elfstrom, Ken Kobland, Joel Shapiro, & Dyanna Taylor. Additional Photography: Chip Nusbaum & Anita Sieff. Assistant Camera: Ulli Bonnekamp, John Griffiths, Glen Piegari, Kipjaz Savoie, & Ben Wolf. Sound: Ray Day, John Fintel, Alan Sawyer, Scott Szabo, J.T. Takagi, & Eric Williams. Gaffer/Grip: Steve Carrillo, Kent Eanes, Dennis Hollyfield, Greg Szabo, & Lieven Van Hulle. Production Assistant: Mark Chevarria, Anya Dehr-Turrell, Chris Dowling, Heather Glass, Melissa Morgan, & Erin Wile. Animation Stand Photographer: Marcos Levy & City Lights. Assistant Avid Editor: Heather Burak & Matt Prinzig.

Full credits available at https://art21.org/watch/art-in-the-twenty-first-century/s1/spirituality

Major underwriting for Season 1 of Art in the Twenty-First Century is provided by Robert Lehman Foundation, PBS, National Endowment for the Arts, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Agnes Gund and Daniel Shapiro, The Allen Foundation for the Arts, The Broad Art Foundation, The Jon and Mary Shirley Foundation, Bagley Wright Fund, The Rockefeller Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, and The Foundation-to-Life.

#ShahziaSikander #Spirituality #Art21

♪ (intro music) ♪

(water drips)

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.

(rubbing paper)

One thing I've learned is respect for

tradition and respect for patience

(laughs) because you just cannot achieve

anything...
You can't achieve a painting if

you don't... You need time.

Time is the key.

I can't do a show and prepare a body of
work in a year. I need three to four years

♪ (contemplative music) ♪

Miniature painting comes out of book
illustration, manuscript painting...

It's an old art form.

All the strange, stacked-up perspective,

interior spaces and suggestions of

windows and doors, which suggest the

outside world or the spiritual world, or
some notion of perfection.

♪ (contemplative music) ♪

That kind of jewel-like translucency that

comes through is only because you have a
discipline behind it.

(paper rubbing)

It takes many, many layers - at least ten

to twenty layers of different colour - to

build it up. You have to be very careful,

because if your brush is loaded with too

much water, you'll lift off the earlier

layers of pigment also, because
they're not sealed.

So, it's practice.

Sometimes, when I'm not in practice,

all of ten years of experience doesn't
mean a thing! (laughs)

When we were studying in school in

Pakistan, my teacher used to have us sit

on the floor on white sheets and you had
to leave your shoes outside.

Everything was very precise and very clean
and very minimal.

You worked on your work and
did eye exercises.

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

It was very methodical.
It was very ritualistic, also.

♪ (contemplative music) ♪

I feel like why I loved 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; I was painting on
paper with a particular set of materials.

But it was all about surface, palette,
form, composition, stylization...

And self-expression came later.

♪ (contemplative music) ♪

A lot of my work is deeply personal
and drawn on memory.

If you look at this particular border,

it's called 'Writing the Written'.

Here, the text becomes more like horses.

There's a suggestion of movement.

That aspect is my experience of reading
the Quran, where I would read it with no

particular understanding because I was a
child. I could read Arabic but I couldn't

understand it. 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.

♪ (contemplative music) ♪

My whole purpose of taking on miniature
painting was to break the tradition,

to experiment with it,
to find new ways of making meaning,

to question the relevance of it.

(paper rustles)

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.

(paper rustles)

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 that much information
about Hindu mythology.

When I came here, I realized that these
were the things which still interested me.

(paper rustles)

I was looking at the idea
of the Hindu goddess.

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 had a very specific face.

Here, I was stripping off the face
and putting a headdress, like the veil,

on top of it. Yet the veil is on
top of a Hindu goddess.

Not to underestimate what's
behind the veil.

The miniatures bring the word 'veil'
into the equation.

It kind of connects you to a
Muslim identity or a woman's identity.

These are very loaded issues to take on,

because anything and everything

associated with Islam is either terrorism
or oppression for women.

Culturally, it's not my experience.

My grandparents, my parents... Everybody
was very, very progressive,

very supportive people.

My grandfather was very encouraging
towards careers for women - for everybody.

All the girls in the family did something
with their lives.

SIKANDER'S MOTHER: But then I was more
keen... "If she's going to the National

College of Art, then she might as well do
architecture, which has scope."

You know, when she said:
"Fine Arts," one was a bit...

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

Whether you have a future or not...
(BOTH LAUGH)

- So I was skeptical about that...
- (SHAHZIA) Sorry!

(machinery whirs)

(rustling)

(SHAHZIA) This type of work for me was

just the opposite of the process of
doing miniature painting.

(machinery whirs)

(paper rustles)

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. I'm
working within the space

and I'm up and down the ladders
and I'm painting,

and everything kind of happens from
start till end within four to five days.

So there's a certain energy
which comes out.

(paper rustles)

There is a certain sense of a low-relief,

where several drawings have been hung
on top of each other.

(paper slides)

There's no intention to hide anything.

Everything is very visible.

The paper is transparent.

It flows, it moves...

The idea comes out of this whole

relationship to veiling
and revealing.

(distant footsteps, paper rustles)

I'm always taking photographs,
doing sketches or taking notes.

Then, I carry them wherever I go.

I brought so much stuff from Pakistan
and then so much stuff from Texas,

and every time I sit to do some work,
all of it is opened up.

(machinery whirs)
(switch clicks)

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

(laughs)
You know, you go and you experience

something, and you come back right
where you started.

When I'm working large and I paint

and do murals, the next thing is: always
I come back to miniature painting.

I can hate miniature for a while,

because it's frustrating,
for all the different reasons

of doing something so labor-intensive
which takes years to make.

It's always like, 'Why do I do this?'

And I'll let go, and I'll do
something else,

but I always come back to it.

Maybe because the sheer act of doing it
gives me a certain sort of peace.

♪ (contemplative music) ♪

♪ (outro music) ♪

VOICEOVER: To order a 2-tape set
of art:21 - Art in the 21st Century

on video cassette
or the companion book to the program,

call PBS Home Video at
1-800-PLAY-PBS.

To learn more about art:21 -
Art in the 21st Century,

and to download the free Teacher's Guide,
please visit PBS online at PBS.org

♪ (outro music) ♪