Shahzia Sikander (b. 1969, Pakistan) is widely celebrated for her pioneering work in subverting Central and South-Asian miniature painting traditions, bringing them into dialogue with contemporary international art practices and launching the form known today as “neo-miniature”. Engaging ideas of language, trade, empire, and migration through fluid and surreal permutations, Sikander’s work resonates with a postmodern world and a contemporary feminist perspective. Her iconoclastic multimedia practice expands painting, video animation, mosaic, and sculpture to explore gender, sexuality, racial narratives, and colonial histories. Her work is rooted in a lexicon of recurring motifs that makes visible marginalized subjects. At times turning the lens inward, Sikander reflects on her own experience as an immigrant and diasporic artist working in the United States.

Sikander earned a B.F.A. in 1991 from the National College of Arts in Lahore, Pakistan. Her seminal thesis work, The Scroll, 1989–1990, garnered awards, exhibitions and press. The artist moved to the United States to pursue an M.F.A. at the Rhode Island School of Design from 1993 to 1995; from 1995 to 1997. Sikander was a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship (2006) and the Pollock Prize for Creativity awarded by the Pollock-Krasner Foundation (2023).

Recent solo exhibitions include The Last Post, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. (2025). Collective Behavior, a major exhibition of Sikander’s work, debuted in Venice during the Biennale Arte 2024 and was co-organized by the Cincinnati Art Museum and the Cleveland Museum of Art. The exhibition opened at both Ohio institutions in February 2025 and traveled to the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University in September 2025.

Sikander is presenting her cinematic hand-drawn animation 3 to 12 Nautical Miles on the M+ Facade, which traces the entangled histories of empire, trade, and maritime power. The work is on view from 23 March to 21 June 2026.