Traversing Multiple Realities of Contemporary American and Asian Art: Shahzia Sikander

Traversing Multiple Realities of Contemporary American and Asian Art: Shahzia Sikander from The Institute of Fine Arts on Vimeo.

a panel with Kelly Baum, Gayatri Gopinath, & Brinda Kumar; moderated by Dipti Khera

September 22, Wednesday, 6 pm ET

In conjunction with the exhibition Shahzia Sikander: Extraordinary Realities, jointly organized by the Morgan Library & Museum (on view through September 26, 2021) and the RISD Museum (November 12, 2021 – January 30, 2022), IFA Contemporary Asia is excited to present a webinar featuring the internationally celebrated Pakistani American artist Shahzia Sikander. Having established pioneering conversations since the 1990s between her contemporary art practice and South, West, and Central Asian manuscript traditions, Sikander exploded their storytelling potential within heterogeneous mediums over the past three decades. Sikander’s paintings, video animations, mosaics, and sculptures incisively probe gender roles and sexuality, racial and colonial narratives. Her work playfully critiques Orientalist histories of art and America’s global wars, poignantly centering the violence of empires, past and present, and displaying near and distant geographies as inextricably linked.

Professor Dipti Khera, Associate Professor of South Asian Art and Architecture at NYU, will introduce the panel. Three scholars will discuss the ideas and questions provoked by Sikander’s wide-ranging artistic practice: Dr. Kelly Baum, Cynthia Hazen Polsky and Leon Polsky Curator of Contemporary Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Professor Gayatri Gopinath, Director of the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality at NYU; and Dr. Brinda Kumar, Associate Curator, Department of Modern and Contemporary Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.  

This discussion seeks to expand the understandings of Sikander’s practice in relation to broader narratives about contemporary American and Asian Art; the framing of Asian diasporic artists in curatorial practice and museums; and the history of collecting and colonialism that Sikander has intertwined in interrogating migrations of peoples and objects in the longue durée.

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Please register for this free online event here.

Organized by the NYU Institute of Fine Arts & the IFA Contemporary Asia Forum; co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Gender & Sexuality.