Intimacy

Sikander experiments with the highly stylized and image-oriented genre of Indian and Persian miniature painting. In exquisitely rendered vignettes, she questions the meaning of both centuries-old and present-day painting traditions and the cultural conventions behind them. Mindful of the ways Eastern art is read in the West, she explores the fascinating disruptions that occur when elements of Muslim, Hindu, and Western iconography are mixed. By fragmenting, then recombining these images, Sikander creates intentionally ambiguous and open-ended narratives in her work. Intimacy, created during her residency at ArtPace in San Antonio and the first work in which she incorporated animation technology, was a groundbreaking achievement for the young artist.