Hardback, colour and black and white illustrations, 96 pages, W215mm x H285mm
This
catalogue accompanies Shahzia Sikander’s first solo show in the UK. Shahzia Sikander’s work engages with the
tradition of miniature painting as a way to focus on the contradictions of
scale versus labour, precision versus gesture, and formal versus subjective.
This discipline enabled her to connect with a particular aspect of Pakistani
art and history that had been reduced to kitsch for the tourist market place;
understand the original significance of miniatures; and reinvest the form with
her present-day images and concerns.
However, and importantly, her work resists
cliché and categorisation avoiding labelling which confines its reading to that
of singular cultural origin or identity. In both small and large-scale
gouaches, wall paintings and digital animations, layering is employed as both a
technique and metaphor.