The Life of Forms in Shahzia Sikander’s Art: A Conversation between Claire Brandon and Shahzia Sikander
VIEW EVENT DETAILSShahzia Sikander: Apparatus of Power Lecture Series
Evening Presentation by Artist SHAZIA SIKANDER, and CLAIRE BRANDON, Guest Curator, “Shahzia Sikander: Apparatus of Power”
Registration 6:45pm,
Lecture 7:00pm,
Close 8:00pm
Shahzia Sikander: Apparatus of Power, is the first major solo presentation of the renowned artist in Hong Kong. Shahzia Sikander took up the craft-based practice of miniature painting in Pakistan in the late 1980s and has continuously challenged its potential to communicate in multiple contexts and formats. In doing so, she has developed a rich visual vocabulary that is culled from personal experience, technical experimentation, and historical sources. Guest Curator Claire Brandon and artist Shahzia Sikander will discuss some of the ideas behind the exhibition, including the concept of the "Apparatus of Power" and several of the works on view.
Shahzia Sikander is a Pakistani-born and internationally recognized artist. Her pioneering practice takes Indo-Persian miniature painting as a point of departure. Sikander received her BFA in 1991 from the National College of Arts, Lahore, Pakistan and her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1995. She challenges the strict formal tropes of miniature painting as well as its medium-based restrictions by experimenting with scale and media. Such media include animation, video, mural, and collaboration with other artists. Her process-based work is concerned with examining the forces at stake in contested cultural and political histories. Sikander’s innovative expansion on this traditional genre helped launch a major resurgence of work with miniature painting beginning in the early 1990s at her alma mater in Lahore, which spread and brought international recognition to this medium within contemporary art practices.
Sikander has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including the Asia Society Award for Significant Contribution to Contemporary Art (2015). Her work is included in many permanent collections, such as the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo; MoMA; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Palazzo Grassi, Venice.
Claire Brandon is a specialist in modern and contemporary art and a Ph.D. candidate in art history at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. She has lectured and participated in panels at the College Art Association Conference (2015); The Humanities Initiative, New York University (2014), and many more. In 2014, she organized and participated in a conference entitled “The Contemporary Museum in Italy Since 1990” at NYU’s Villa La Pietra in Florence, bringing together curators, scholars, museum directors, and cultural officials to discuss the status of the Italian museum today. Brandon is the recipient of several awards, most recently the Willner Family Fellowship at NYU (2015-2016), the Global Research Institute Fellowship at NYU (2012-2013 and 2013-2014), the Gladys Krieble Delmas Fellowship for Research in the Veneto (2012-2013 and 2013-2014), and the Mellon Digital Tools Workshop Grant at NYU (2013). In 2014, she was a fellow in the inaugural Center for Curatorial Leadership/Mellon Foundation Seminar in New York.
Event Details
Asia Society Hong Kong Center, 9 Justice Drive, Admiralty, Hong Kong