SHAHZIA SIKANDER with text by Faisal Devji

Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, 1998, First edition, 63 pp., 8" X 12", Softcover with french flaps

Near fine

Trained in the art of the Indian and Persian miniature, Sikander uses traditional materials and techniques such as vegetable dyes, tea stains, burnished wasli papers, and watercolor to address issues of gender and heritage. Exploring new formats and scale, her unorthodox self portraits investigate the personal and psychological spaces between cultures.

Free of being prescribed while using a very prescribed and structured form. I like that tension. Miniature painting comes with a set of rules It's the materiality, the seductiveness of the surface, the investment, the submission, the hours that are put in In the end, they are very meditative and meaningful gestures, like ritual. In this sense, miniature painting is more about subverting modernity than subverting tradition. -Shahzia Sikander