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Islamic Art
Shahzia Sikander: Radiant Dissonance
The Sean Kelly exhibition marks Sikander’s first solo show in Los Angeles
Shahzia Sikander has hardly been out of the news since the beginning of 2023. Following her breakthrough work The Scroll (1989–90), Sikander had a meteoric rise through the mid-90s, with important survey exhibitions in 1998 at both the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, and multiple solo exhibitions worldwide since. A graduate of the National College of Arts in Lahore, Pakistan and Rhode Island School of Design, and founder of the Neo-miniature movement, Sikander has since become one of the most influential artists working today, and is widely celebrated for her expansion and subversion of the Central- and South-Asian miniature painting tradition. Over the years, Sikander’s practice has been pivotal in showcasing art of the South Asian diaspora as a contemporary American tradition. Her most recent exhibition at Sean Kelly, Shahzia Sikander: Radiant Dissonance, marks her first solo exhibition in Los Angeles, and exhibits her work across multiple mediums, including mosaic, sculpture, animated film, drawing, and large-scale works on paper.
Despite working across different mediums, drawing remains integral to Sikander’s work, existing as…
