Shahzia Sikander is a MacArthur "genius grant" winning artist whose work tells the story of women, their bodies, and their resilience. Her biggest show to date just opened at the Cincinnati Art Museum and the Cleveland Museum of Art.
The new exhibitions come a few months after a public sculpture she created of a female figure was decapitated in Texas. Anti-abortion protestors had called the sculpture "demonic." The person, or persons, who destroyed the sculpture haven't been caught (though a person was seen committing the act on security footage), and Sikander chose not to fix it.
In this interview with WYSO, she said she hopes that art can encourage an exchange of ideas, as opposed to censorship or vandalism.
Shahzia Sikander's new art show is on display now at the Cincinnati Museum of Art through May 4 and the Cleveland Museum of Art through June 8.
The new show, called "Collective Behaviors," features drawings, paintings, and prints, as well as sculpture, glass mosaic, and video animations, all created over the past 30 years. But, she said, her career began with painting in the tradition of illustrated South Asian manuscripts.
"History is not just one way of understanding an event, a time, a period, it has multiple stories." Sikander said. "So I think that idea that the linearity gets disrupted or one perspective gets disrupted or the very precise, precious nature of a manuscript folio, we've been trained to look at it in a very precious manner, disrupting that and making it less precious."
She said she uses the ancient art form as a point of departure to center women's stories, disrupting historical narratives.
"That doesn't mean you have to physically destroy it, but conceptually, there are other ways of engaging with even its material nature," Sikander said.
Her material transformations are playful and sensuous. In the video animation in the Cincinnati exhibit, "Disruption as Rapture," an 18th-century manuscript painting comes alive on the screen. Its figures break apart and dissolve, becoming overwhelmed with dots of light, a profusion of flower petals, and music that echoes through the exhibition.
"The idea of disruption is that then there's rapture because it is going to hopefully open up a more varied space and more of a space." Sikander said, "The multiplicity allows more space for everybody."
She said it creates space for curiosity and the exchange of ideas about identity and representation.
Exhibit curator and curator of South Asian Art, Islamic Art, and Antiquities at the Cincinnati Art Museum, Dr. Ainsley Cameron, said in an interview that she sees this show as a way to break down silos between Eastern and Western culture.
"The concept of East and West as being inherently different just isn't true. There have been interrelated cultures, religions, languages, economics, and political histories throughout the entire human civilization." Cameron said. "So, for me, I want to talk about the intersection of culture. I want to bring people together by putting Shahzia's art in conversation with historic material as well as contemporary material. She is a revolutionary contemporary American artist whose work is at home in the contemporary realm as it is speaking and dialoguing with historical works."
But it hasn't always been a comfortable dialogue, especially with Sikander's public art.
On view in the show is a towering sculpture of a female figure made for temporary installation on the roof of the New York State Supreme Court.
She is a revolutionary contemporary American artist whose work is at home in the contemporary realm as it is speaking and dialoguing with historical works.Ainsley Cameron
It's similar to the female figure that was installed on the campus grounds of the University of Houston last year. While there, it was decapitated after anti-abortion protestors called the sculpture demonic because it had braided hair wound like a ram's horns. Sikander said she originally adapted that part of the sculpture from imagery used in the Supreme Court to represent strength and wisdom.
She said the vandalism was violent, hateful, and misogynistic, but like any artist, Sikander said she can't control what viewers think her work means.
"That's the beauty of art, that it should allow a discourse to happen. It should be about having multiple opinions, but at least having a conversation which is different from getting censored or destruction. So how do we move to a dialogue"? She said, "But even in its destruction, then it becomes something else. So I wanted to then leave it as is because then it carries that story."
This story was produced at the Eichelberger Center for Community Voices at WYSO. Culture Couch is supported by the Ohio Arts Council.
