1/2 Shahzia Sikander

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Shahzia Sikander is a multi-media American-Pakistani artist traditionally trained in Indo-Persian miniature painting.  She received her bachelor's degree from the National College of Arts Lahore, and her MFA degree from Rhode Island School of Design. Shahzia creates video installations through drawing, animation, movement, and sound to tell stories about current socio-political issues involving the Middle Eastern identity and its history. They are not so much news or history lessons but her personal commentary. I believe her videos are successful because by animating her drawings in a continuous linear fashion, she propels her narratives forward and engages the viewer in such a way that we feel we are watching a storybook unfold. Some transitions are slow- one drawing fades into the next, and others have characters or abstract symbols dance across the screen. Her video installations success also comes from the fact that she projects them larger than life across entire walls, in dark rooms, with reverberating sound. In this way, viewers can enter the space and feel enveloped by her work, themselves becoming part of the narrative.




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