Shahzia Sikander

The towers and aircraft in this painting call to mind the 9/11 attacks. The towers also suggest oil derricks, possible referencing the dependence of the United States on foreign oil, which was brought into question during President Bush’s impending invasion of Iraq. Heraldry links present-day policies to colonial-era exploitation. The dark purse-like form, a lingam casket, would have held an amulet, but as scholar Faisal Devji suggests, it “looks like grenades on a suicide belt.” The spider web refers to one that shielded the prophet Muhammad from persecutors as he hid in a cave. The lush landscape with animals both nurtured and preyed on-copied from a Mughal sheet in the collection of the Freer Gallery-is the foundation of this composition filled with references to protection and destruction.

Shahzia Sikander’s works reflect the shifting nature of boundaries-geographical, cultural, and psychological-experienced by anyone who has left their country of origin to live in another. Combining the tradition of Indo-Persian miniatures with her own frequently expressive and abstract manner of painting, Sikander builds formal and metaphorical layers of meaning in Web. The abstracted purse, or box, itself implies a narrative, while the somewhat violent hunting scenes reference imagery in Persian miniature paintings. These figures are layered with a spider’s web and other references to contact or communication, such as planes and communication towers. The drawing seems to reference the instability of a post-9/11 world.