Shahzia Sikander: Collective Behavior

The Cantor Arts Center presents Shahzia Sikander: Collective Behavior, a career-spanning exhibition of the internationally renowned New York-based artist. For more than three decades, Shahzia Sikander (born 1969, Lahore, Pakistan) has been reframing South Asian visual histories through a contemporary feminist perspective. Sikander’s command of diverse media and traditions, from historical South Asian miniature paintings to digital animation, reveals a vibrant visual universe that reimagines the past for our present moment. Throughout her practice, she considers diasporic experiences, histories of colonialism, and Western relations with the global south and the wider Islamic world, often through the lens of gender and body politics.

Rather than proceeding chronologically, Collective Behavior follows Sikander’s primary ideas and inquiries throughout her work, rooted as they are in a recurring lexicon of forms, figures, and ideas. Beginning with Sikander’s extraordinary undergraduate thesis work, The Scroll, the exhibition explores Sikander’s role as an American artist, a Pakistani artist, a Muslim artist, and a feminist artist. Perhaps most significantly, it situates Sikander as a transformative global citizen and artist committed to disrupting established historical narratives.

Shahzia Sikander: Collective Behavior premiered as a Collateral Event of the 60th International Art Exhibition—La Biennale di Venezia, co-organized by the Cincinnati Art Museum and the Cleveland Museum of Art. After Venice, complementary iterations of the exhibition opened across Ohio. At the Cantor, this exhibition is connected to the museum’s Asian American Art Initiative (AAAI) and represents the most significant solo show of an Asian American artist associated with this initiative to date. Shahzia Sikander: Collective Behavior is accompanied by a vividly illustrated catalogue featuring scholarly and poetic responses to the artist’s work.

Shahzia Sikander: Collective Behavior is organized by the Cincinnati Art Museum.

The Cantor Arts Center presentation is curated by Aleesa Pitchamarn Alexander, Robert M. and Ruth L. Halperin Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art and Co-Director of the Asian American Art Initiative at the Cantor Arts Center.

We gratefully acknowledge major support for Shahzia Sikander: Collective Behavior provided by Sara and Sohaib Abbasi. Generous support provided by Tad Freese and Brook Hartzell. Additional support provided by Zarmeena Vendal. Sustained support generously provided by The Darle and Patrick Maveety Fund for Asian Art, The Constance Corcoran Miller Fund for Academic Initiatives, The Robert Mondavi Family Fund at the Cantor Arts Center, and The Khoan and Michael Sullivan Fund