Influenced by historical poetry and literature from South Asia, Central Asia and Iran, Shahzia Sikander reimagines history through a contemporary lens in the artwork presented in the Shahzia Sikander: Collective Behavior exhibit at the Cincinnati Art Museum and Cleveland Museum of Art.
Sikander is an internationally renowned artist born in Lahore, Pakistan, in 1969. Sikander’s mixed media artwork routinely showcases South Asian history through contemporary American art traditions.
Sikander is also an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s Institute for Comparative Literature and Society and Brown University. She has received many notable awards throughout her career, such as the Pollock Prize for Creativity, the Fukuoka Arts and Culture Prize and more.
Shahzia Sikander: Collective Behavior is a comprehensive exploration of Sikander’s work to date, organized thematically.
“Collective Behavior proposes kinship systems between experience, consciousness, race, and culture,” said Sikander in the Cincinnati Art Museum press release. “The works in this exhibition address many themes close to my heart, including centering women’s narratives among uneven power relations and ongoing legacies of colonialism. Taking a global feminist perspective, I explore gender and body politics, examining the female form and feminine presence in art, religion, and society.”
Viewers can find quotes on the walls and on the labels for her artwork straight from the artist in the exhibition. Her exhibition is also accompanied by sound, with scores by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Du Yun, who has collaborated with Sikander for over a decade, playing in the gallery.
The exhibition first premiered during La Biennale di Venezia at the Palazzo Soranzo van Axel in Venice from April 20-Nov. 24, 2024.
“Venice is now this intersection for global contemporary art, being this global network of trade of culture, religion and language through this geographic place,” said Ainsley M. Cameron, the curator of Shahzia Sikander: Collective Behavior. “To put Shahzia in Venice isn’t just to put her on a global contemporary art platform, it is to put her in a place that resonates historically as well as globally.”
The exhibit is now on display at the Cincinnati Art Museum and Cleveland Museum of Art until May 4.
With nearly 100 pieces of artwork — paintings, drawings, prints, digital animations, mosaics, sculptures and glasswork —the exhibition has been separated into three different themes: Point of Departure, The Feminine Space and Negotiated Landscapes and Contested Histories.
The Point of Departure showcases how Sikander engages with issues such as femininity, colonialism, gender and more. These ideas are shown through modern mosaics, animations, large-scale collages and paintings breaking the boundaries of tradition that they stem from.
The Feminine Space shows a creation that Sikander returns to time and time again of fierce femininity — a headless woman with beautiful tentacles for feet. “It gives the figure a buoyancy and life embodying feminine strength and empowerment that she brings forward through this figure,” said Cameron as she described the original figure. “It is self-resilient. It is beyond religious, historical and cultural confines.”
The 8-foot sculpture leading into the exhibit, “NOW,” has the same tentacle-like feet representing that female energy. “NOW” was also displayed on the roof of the Manhattan Appellate Courthouse in 2023.
Negotiated Landscapes and Contested Histories shows Sikander’s in-depth viewpoint of the history of colonialism, trade and the movement of people. Some of the works show how heavily Sikander is influenced by poets and literary traditions, such as in her piece entitled “The World Is Yours, The World Is Mine” that incorporates images of Langston Hughes and Nas.
This third section of the exhibition includes a 15-minute and 25-second digital animation of hand drawings with sound by Du Yun called “Parallax,” representing the geopolitical history of the Strait of Hormuz, located between Iran and the Middle East.
The Shahzia Sikander: Collective Behavior exhibit is on view now at the Cincinnati Art Museum. For more information about the exhibit, visit cincinnatiartmuseum.org.
This article appears in Feb 19 – Mar 4, 2025.