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Shahzia Sikander: The Exploding Company Man and Other Abstractions

Presented by Massachusetts College of Art and Design

September 19-November 26, 2011

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Shahzia Sikander works in a time of great geopolitical change. Recent events in the Middle East, for example, have helped to break down clichéd cultural and political boundaries and open up new frameworks for contemporary visual art. Working in painting, drawing, animation, installation, video, and film, and employing ideas that are often subversive and polemical in nature, Sikander creates artworks that are physical manifestations of the momentum of our globalized world. Sikander interweaves references to the past with reflections on everyday life and its forms, and these visual motifs, drawn from a rich mental archive of imagery, repeat and reinvent themselves across various media. Sikander’s primary materials include graphite, ink, and gouache on paper, and in 2001 she began working in digital animation, setting her miniatures into motion. This use of animation, as well as her layered images and the play between representational and abstract forms, de-stabilizes Sikander’s representations and visually embodies her central concerns of transformation, societies in flux, and disruption as a means to cultivate new associations.

A number of exciting free public events are planned for October 3, 2011. At 5:30pm, Sikander will speak in the Tower Auditorium about her work and be available to answer questions. The exhibition’s opening reception will follow in the Bakalar Gallery with a special live performance by internationally known composer and musician Du Yun, who collaborated with Sikander on a video on view in the exhibition.

The exhibition Shahzia Sikander: The Exploding Company Man and Other Abstractions was curated by Hou Hanru for the Walter and McBean Galleries at the San Francisco Art Institute.

Exhibitions at the college are free and open to the public. For current information, please visit MassArt.edu, email galleryinfo@massart.edu, or call the automated information line at 617-879-7333.