Reckoning: Shahzia Sikander from Manuscript Painting to Contemporary Animation

Artist’s talk: 5:00 p.m., Carroll Room, Campus Center, Smith College
This in-person event will be live streamed on Facebook.

Reception to follow: 6–7:30 p.m. Brown Fine Arts Atrium, Smith College Museum of Art 

Shahzia Sikander (b. Lahore, Pakistan) is widely celebrated for subverting Central and South-Asian manuscript painting traditions. Sikander will discuss her contemporary practice–which includes painting, sculpture, and animation–and the historical influences that inform her work. 

Join us after the talk for a reception in the Brown Fine Arts Atrium, adjacent to the Smith College Museum of Art. The museum will be open to visitors from 6-7:30 PM during the event. Two of Sikander’s animations–The Last Post and Reckoning–are featured in the exhibition Painting the Persianate World: Portable Images on Painting, Cloth, and Clay, on view February 2–July 7, 2024.

Born in Lahore, Pakistan, Shahzia Sikander earned a B.F.A. in 1991 from the National College of Arts (NCA) in Lahore. Sikander’s breakthrough work, The Scroll, 1989–90, received national critical acclaim in Pakistan and brought international recognition to this medium within contemporary art practices in the 1990s. Sikander received her M.F.A.at the Rhode Island School of Design in 1995. Over the subsequent twenty plus years, Sikander’s practice – which has expanded to include paintings, media work and most recently, sculpture, has been pivotal in showcasing art of the South Asian diaspora as a contemporary American tradition.

The Miller Lecture in Art and Art History is an endowed program established by Dr. Michael Miller in memory of his wife, Dulcy Blume Miller, who was a member of the class of 1946. Each year, SCMA invites a distinguished artist, art historian, or curator to deliver a public lecture; previous lecturers have included Isaac Julien, Asma Naeem, Amanda Williams, Anne Pasternak, Maya Lin, William Kentridge, Lorna Simpson, Robert Rosenblum and Philip Pearlstein.