Art, Aesthetics and the Itineraries of M

This mini seminar asks how we might approach the Mughal miniature today through new practices of experiment and innovation while bearing in mind the material history, and the infrastructural contexts of training and apprenticeship through which South Asian art and aesthetics has typically approached the study of this form. Art making as embodied labor, questions about the archive and its availability for creative repurposing, and the relationship between the artwork and museum will be explored. Critical practices of deconstructing the visual archive as well as discussions about the materiality of art practice will orient discussions about contemporary South Asian art as a conversation between “traditional” forms, and experimental methods.

Pioneering Pakistani American artist, Shahzia Sikander is widely celebrated for expanding and subverting pre-modern and classical Central and South-Asian miniature painting traditions and launching the form known today as neo-miniature. By bringing the non-western art-historical visual vernacular into dialogue with contemporary international art practices, Sikander’s multivalent work examines colonial archives to readdress orientalist narratives in western art history.  Recipient of the MacArthur genius grant and US Medal of Art, Sikander's work has been exhibited and collected internationally.  Her exhibition 'Extraordinary Realities' was on view at the Morgan Library NY, RISD Museum and the MFA Houston from 2021- 2022.  A newly commissioned public art- work for Madison Square Park will open in NYC in Jan 2023.

The artist will discuss her own art practice through a focus on formal elements of the miniature tradition as these have been adapted to the requirements of diverse media and viewing publics. Seminar discussion will draw on the artist’s personal archive of slides and other visual material.