Acclaimed visual artist Shahzia Sikander spoke last Thursday in a co-presentation by the School of the Arts and the Wallach Art Gallery on the powerful meaning of her work and artistic practices. 

On November 14, Columbia’s School of the Arts hosted the widely celebrated Pakistani artist Shahzia Sikander for a conversation. The event was in collaboration with Columbia’s Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, the Institute for the Study of Sexuality and Gender, the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery, the South Asian Institute, and the Zuckerman Institute. Introduced by Sarah Cole, the Dean of the School of the Arts, Sikander had a conversation with Betti-Sue Hertz, the director and chief curator at the Wallach Art Gallery, where she shared insights on her works, accomplishments and artistic practices. 

Prior to attending this talk, I was familiar with her work through my Introduction to Art History class, where her animated art piece, SpiNN (III) was a key work during our studies on the Mughal Empire. Thus, when I saw that she was coming to campus for an event, I made sure to register to be in attendance. 

Sikander is an extremely accomplished artist. A recipient of the Macarthur Award and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation’s Pollock Prize for Creativity, she has had works showcased at PacePrints, the Museum of Modern Art, the RISD Museum and more. Most recently, Sikander presented a survey exhibition show, entitled Collective Behavior, at the 60th Venice Biennale. 

The evening kicked off with a solo talk by Sikander, in which she addressed the controversy surrounding her work Witness, which was recently vandalized in Houston, Texas. Witness was originally commissioned and debuted at Madison Square Park in New York City before moving onto the University of Houston campus. There, the work met its demise when, in the middle of the night, a man with a hammer beheaded the sculpture of a woman adorned in a barrel skirt and a Ruth Bader Ginsburg-esque lattice collar. Originally, Sikander created the work to serve as “the summons of femininity in allegorical power,” through nods to powerful motifs of the female condition. However, upon the destruction of the work, she now describes the sculpture as a “witness to the fissures of the nation.” Sikander spoke on her choice to leave the sculpture beheaded “for all to see,” showcasing the damage of such polarization in our nation, which commentators like Tucker Carlson have attacked out of hate and ignorance. However, for Sikander to refuse to remodel her work is a bold and brave statement on the power of making your voice heard when someone tries to hush it, especially in a time when womens rights are under increasing scrutiny and attack. 

After addressing the controversy surrounding Witness, Sikander presented a survey of her decades long career and artistic practices, which are based in representations of “centering women as agents of transformation,” in her artistic mediums that range from stained glass to large scale sculptures that sit upon the roof of the New York Courthouse of the Appellate Division. Throughout her lecture, Sikander showcased many of her works from her career that invoked many visual mediums and representations of the female condition. Sikander talked about her artmaking processes, which are derived from connecting the “threads of meaning in art” by looking through archives and manuscripts to analyze histories of power and storytelling, specifically the histories of “invisible violence and tokenism of women.” 

When addressing the critical, and often controversial, receptions of her work in conversation with Hertz and the ensuing question and answer forum, Sikander spoke about how the “politics of the art world,” have made the course to success often difficult for women. However, Sikander always “looks to the past to move forward” in her work. Through this powerful and moving evening at the Manhattanville campus, Sikander’s meaningful and vulnerable conversations on her art left everyone in the audience feeling both empowered and artistically inspired as the talk wrapped up. 

Image credits via Author