Shahzia Sikander: Melting Boundaries | Art21 "Extended Play”

(peaceful music)

(gentle music)

As a female, my entire life,

I've been aware of patriarchal spaces

and how erasure is enacted
on women in the civic space,

the space of law, the space of art.

You have to open up these
spaces to represent all of us.

(gentle music)

For almost three decades, I have worked

in the Indian and Persian
manuscript traditions.

Having grown up in Pakistan,

I didn't have access to a
lot of the original artwork.

Because of colonial history,

the majority of this work has
been torn and dismembered,

and ended up in Western institutions.

Erasure. Lack of visibility.

These things are at the core
of my relationship with art.

(gentle music)

Moving between animation,
murals, mosaic, and sculpture,

I often think of my practice
as an anti-monument,

because it engages the past,

but it doesn't glorify the past.

(gentle music)

I was really inspired by public artwork

and what monuments could stand for.

The conflicts that are there

because people have
competing visions of history.

When Madison Square Park

asked me to put a proposal together,

I thought I would love to explore the art

in the courthouse overlooking the park,

and then tie it into the
project with the park.

(gentle music)

Works that are here,

which, of course, are part of a history,

it's a moment in time
captured for what it is.

(gentle music)

On the roof of the courthouse

are nine statues of ancient
male lawgivers or philosophers.

There's Manu, the author of Hindu laws,

and then there's King Louis IV of France.

However, the space of the women

is in this allegorical space,
such as the Lady Justice.

(gentle music)

Why couldn't there be another
iteration of the feminine,

standing on its own sort of
truth as an equal participant?

- Like, if you were
there, if you're walking,

you could see both.

I decided to make two sculptures.

One is inside the park.

One is on the roof of the courthouse.

(birds chirping)

So, this is one of the early sketches.

(gentle music)

A signature image in my work
has been this feminine body,

kind of a quick gesture,

often emerging out of
just gouache on paper.

So it's this sort of very
fluid notion of the body,

and it has a multiplicity to it.

It felt very true to me to start there.

What is it? Is it the legs?

- Parts of it.

The legs.

When they're sort of looping back in,

for me, that suggests a
form that is self-rooted.

(crew member indistinctly speaking)

- Okay.

The feminine can carry its
roots wherever it goes.

It can choose to go wherever it wants.

You don't need to have roots

into one specific space or time,

nation or culture.

(gentle music)

The suggestion of horns

could be a unification through braids.

It has a very clear link to
an older painting of mine,

talking more about the courage,

fluidity, and resilience of the feminine.

No one person on a plinth

can represent multiple perspectives,

so it had to be more allegorical,

like a feminine collective
space that can keep growing.

(gentle music)

In the sculpture on the rooftop,

she has the seat of the lotus.

It is really symbolic of
humility and clarity and wisdom.

My big concern was how to

go in the direction of sculpture,

but keep it as close to my animations

and have as much movement in the work.

You can see how light is
coming through the ceiling.

It's very subtle, but it's changing.

Just that itself implies movement.

I wanted to play off of the
ceiling in the courthouse,

so the skirt allows it to show

the glass ceiling that the
feminine can break through.

Sort of floating here.

(Shahzia chuckles)
(gentle music)

Then I can mimic this
gorgeous stained glass

with actual glass mosaic on the sculpture.

- So, see, like this.

- Oh, that color is really-

- [Mosaic Artist] Yeah,
I have a lot of this.

- [Shahzia] Clean and bright.

- [Mosaic Artist] Yes.
It's really a nice color.

- [Shahzia] Yeah. This
will work really well.

- [Mosaic Artist] It's beautiful.

- [Shahzia] This can
be used in more amount.

- [Mosaic Artist] Yep.

When I was sketching the skirt,

I started to play with the word
"havah" on the skirt itself.

In my spoken Urdu, "havah" would mean air,

the breath's relationship to life.

Also, "havah" can imply Eve.

(mosaic artist indistinctly murmurs)

- Let's break this.

- [Mosaic Artist] Okay.

[Shahzia] Eve could be
considered the first lawbreaker.

(glass clatters)
(gentle music)

Female are often the markers
when boundaries are melting.

- The significant of it
being just up there is huge!

- Symbolically-

- Yes!

- It's a big intervention.

- Yes.

(speakers indistinctly talking)

Since the work has been up,

there's been a lot of commentary
on abortion and women.

The context in this particular project

is allowing the work to have meanings

that it would not carry otherwise.

It animates people's politics
and fraught relationships.

I thrive on hearing what happens over time

to a project and to a dialogue.

- Women artists.

How else does an artist center
their sense of creativity?

(gentle music)

Whenever we create art and
put something in the world,

I believe it just pushes the envelope of

who gets to be represented
a little further.

These things are really integral to

how art can then negotiate a
space for a future generation.

(gentle music)