Witness, Shahzia Sikander, 2023.
Painted, milled, high-density foam, steel, fiberglass and glass tile, 18 x 13 x 13 feet.
As seen (left) in Madison Square Park, New York, 2023, and University of Houston (right) 2024.
Celebrated visual artist Shahzia Sikander is the Alan Kanzer Artist-in-Residence at the Zuckerman Institute and a Mentor in the MFA Visual Arts Program. She will discuss recent work, including Witness, her sculpture that was vandalized by a man with a hammer on July 8, 2024, in Houston, Texas. “I have chosen not to repair it. I want to leave it beheaded, for all to see. The work is now a witness to the fissures in our country.” Introduced by Sarah Cole, Dean of Columbia University School of the Arts and Parr Professor of English and Comparative Literature. Response by Betti-Sue Hertz, Director and Chief Curator, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery.
Read Shahzia Sikander’s article in The Washington Post: “My Sculpture was beheaded. Here’s why I’m not fixing it.”
Read about the Alan Kanzer Artist-in-Residence at the Zuckerman Institute.
About the artist:
Shahzia Sikander is widely celebrated for subverting Central and South-Asian miniature painting traditions into dialogue with contemporary international art practices and launching the form known today as neo-miniature. Engaging ideas of language, trade, empire, and migration through feminist perspectives, Sikander’s paintings, video animations, mosaics and sculpture explore gender, sexuality, racial narratives, and colonial histories. Sikander is a recipient of the MacArthur award and The Pollock-Krasner Foundation's Pollock Prize for Creativity, among others. A survey exhibition, Shahzia Sikander: Collective Behaviour, was presented by the Cleveland Museum of Art and Cincinnati Art Museum as a Collateral Event of the 60th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia.
Co-presented by Columbia University School of the Arts; the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society; the Institute for the Study of Sexuality and Gender; Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery; the South Asian Institute; and the Zuckerman Institute.
Art As A Witness And An Audacious Image
by Maren Frey
Bwog
November 19, 2024
Acclaimed visual artist Shahzia Sikander spoke last Thursday in a co-presentation by the School of the Arts and the Wallach Art Gallery on the powerful meaning of her work and artistic practices. Read more