Creating Reality in a Cross-Cultral Interplay

Author: Alex Castillo-Kesper

How does the modern artist engage tradition in his or her realm of personal expression? The term "individual artist" was a foreign expression to India during British colonialism, and still remains an ambiguous phrase in modern Indian painting. As India tried to break away from British imperialism during the early 20th century, Indian artists strove to create their own canon of national identity while incorporating culturally inherent forms.
Concurrently, as the Western art world of the late 19th and early 20th centuries sought to find a deeply rooted naturalism in the so-called "arts and crafts" movement, Asia was busy infusing the creation of personal art within traditional practices. India did not need to search for a sense of cultural re-identification, as the Eastern iconographic canon was already firmly embedded within the nation's uninterrupted literary and religious traditions. The theme that still hovers over the works of modern Asian painters is the inextricable link between politics and the individual. This becomes a hefty challenge for many artists who strive to create an artistic expression that is culturally identifiable while also powerfully expressive of the artists' own form and style.
Nowhere is this theme more apparent than in the works of Pakistani artist Shazia Sikander. Sikander traveled to Middlebury from her current home in New York City on Thursday, Nov. 14, to give a lecture. Her work is part of an exhibition presently in the College's Museum of Art.
In much of her work, Sikander presents the historical antipathy between India and Pakistan. She uses the traditional canon of 16th and 17th centuries Mughal miniatures as her model.
After her laborious training in Mughal miniatures at the National College of Lahore, Sikander immigrated to the United States, receiving her bachelor of fine arts at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). Once separated from her nation, she was able to leave the confined aesthetic framework of her earlier training. However, she quickly realized that in the United States her work would be subjected to labels, and the confusing and problematic sense of identity that labeling entails. After graduating from RISD, Sikander believed she needed to "suddenly defend who she was." She found herself, and still finds herself, constantly moving in different directions with her art.
This sense of movement is intrinsic to the blurring of boundaries in Sikander's work. In the United States, Sikander has further explored the long-standing relationship between Hindu and Muslim art, especially in reference to her interaction within and adoption of Western sensibilities. In Sikander's pluralistic style she finds a national, cultural, as well as individual, identity. The artist's message is perceived strongly in her subtraction and alteration of the traditional Mughal canon and the placement of personal and cross-cultural themes. In this form of presentation, Sikander addresses boundaries by not eliminating their existence, but by questioning them.
The Asia Society has on exhibition works from Sikander and an Indian artist, Nilima Sheikh, at the Museum of Art. This exhibit is entitled "Conversations with Traditions," an apt title for the themes of the both artists' paintings. Both Sikander's older works and her more recent works are on display, and it is fascinating to note the differences and similarities between the two sets.
The old works by Sikander use the restricted space of the traditional Mughal manuscript painting to present a clear discourse about Western stereotypes of women's status in South Asia. Sikander takes what she calls the "preciousness" of Mughal painting, and laces it with personal symbolism.
Her new works carry over the theme of onerous miniature practice, abstracting its cultural ties with the layering of delicate, refined Muslim images from the Mughal period's Hamza-Nama, as well as images from the colorful folk tradition of northwest Indian Rajput painting. The otherworldly quality to her newest paintings further blurs the boundaries between cultures. Sikander's manipulation of these new prints expresses her personal and spiritual triumph in traversing the limits of cultural exploration.
Sikander balances, elegantly and provocatively, the personal and political aspect of modernist art. It was both an honor and a fortune to have this artist share her work and accompanying thoughts and explanations while many of her paintings are currently so readily accessible for art students at the museum. Sikander candidly and humbly offered her own "conversations with traditions" at Thursday's slide lecture, and everyone should plan to view this unique and compelling exhibit.