Shahzia Sikander

Can decolonisation entail forms of intimacy? In the search for an answer to this question, this free exhibition focuses on the earlier and more recent works of Pakistani-American artist Shahzia Sikander (b. 1969). Over the course of her career, Sikander has been a pioneer in the study of early modern archives of Islamic and South Asian manuscripts for her contemporary practice. Given its legacy of colonialism, the United Kingdom holds some of the largest collections of the very manuscripts Sikander uncovers and deconstructs. The exhibition examines her innovations within manuscript techniques such as serialisation, cutting and pasting, and calligraphy. Sikander experiments with these practices in a range of media including drawing, painting, print, mosaic, animation, and, most recently, sculpture. New paintings made by the artist in response to a seventeenth-century album of erotic Indian paintings in the collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum will also be on display.