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A green, floral artwork with two winged figures in a grey rectangle

Shahzia Sikander (Pakistani and American, b. 1969), Disruption as Rapture, 2016, HD video animation with 7.1 surround sound, Commissioned by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Courtesy of Sean Kelly Gallery, © Shahzia Sikander.

A feminine figure holding an upside-down figure surrounded by a railing

Shahzia Sikander (Pakistani and American, b. 1969), Elusive Realities, 2000, vegetable color, dry pigment, watercolor, tea, and collage on wasli paper; The Speyer Family Collection, New York, © Shahzia Sikander.

An abstract, curved feminine form with rootlike arms and feet

Shahzia Sikander (Pakistani and American, b. 1969), A Slight and Pleasing Dislocation, 1993, gouache and gesso on board, Cincinnati Art Museum, Alice Bimel Endowment for Asian Art, 2019.195, © Shahzia Sikander.

A circle made from women wearing long dresses

Shahzia Sikander (Pakistani and American, b. 1969), Arose, 2020, glass mosaic with patinated brass frame, Courtesy of Joel S. Pizzuti, © Shahzia Sikander.

A collage featuring several feminine forms in reds, pinks and yellows

Shahzia Sikander (Pakistani and American, b. 1969), Baggage Warrior, 2024, pulp painted collagraph and watermarked pellon transfers with printed kozo inclusion and stenciled pulp painting on two color cotton background, Courtesy of Pace Prints, New York, © Shahzia Sikander.

A long dress on a field of flowers

Shahzia Sikander (Pakistani and American, b. 1969), Fixed, Fluid, 2022, glass mosaic with patinated brass frame, Courtesy of Dr. Fatima Zuberi, © Shahzia Sikander.

A long dress with a halo of earth tone feminine figures

Shahzia Sikander (Pakistani and American, b. 1969), Cholee Kay Peechay Kiya? Chunree Kay Neechay Kiya? (What is under the Blouse? What is under the Dress?), 1997, vegetable color, dry pigment, watercolor, and tea on wasli paper; Hessel Museum of Art, Marieluise Hessel Collection, Hessel Museum of Art, Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, R1999.49, © Shahzia Sikander.

A collage featuring a multi-armed body holding a blue bird in the center

Shahzia Sikander (Pakistani and American, b. 1969), Segments of Desire Go Wandering Off, 1998, collage with vegetable color, dry pigment, watercolor, graphite, and tea on wasli paper; Martin and Rebecca Eisenberg, New York, © Shahzia Sikander.

A large green tree surrounded by swirling, angelic figures

Shahzia Sikander (Pakistani and American, b. 1969), Shroud, 2020, watercolor, ink and gouache on paper; Nicoletta Fiorucci Collection, © Shahzia Sikander.

A sculpture of two nude women. One is sitting, and the other is kneeling on her shoulder

Shahzia Sikander (Pakistani and American, b. 1969), Promiscuous Intimacies, 2020, patinated bronze, Courtesy of Joel S. Pizzuti, © Shahzia Sikander.

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Shahzia Sikander: Collective Behavior

February 14–May 4, 2025

Western & Southern Galleries (Galleries 232 and 233)
Ticketed. Free for Members. Save $2 when purchasing tickets online.
Friends of South Asian Art, Islamic Art and Antiquities
Press Release

See the exhibition for free on Thursday nights from 5–8 p.m. and during Art After Dark on March 28 and April 25 from 5–9 p.m.

The Cincinnati Art Museum 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. Working in a variety of mediums—painting, drawing, print, digital animation, mosaic, sculpture, and glass—she 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. The exhibition explores Sikander’s role as an American artist, a Pakistani artist, a Muslim artist, a feminist artist, and—perhaps most significantly—as a global citizen engaging with a disrupted historical narrative.

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 open across Ohio. CAM’s iteration of Collective Behavior is the largest and most comprehensive presentation of Sikander’s remarkable career. 

Shahzia Sikander: Collective Behavior is accompanied by a vividly illustrated catalogue featuring scholarly and poetic responses to the artist’s work.

Events

Members Opening

Thursday, February 13, 2025, 5–7 p.m.

 

CAM Kids Day: Discover Yourself in Art

Saturday, March 1, 2025, 11 a.m.–3 p.m.

 

Art After Dark

Friday, March 28 and Friday, April 25, 2025, 5–9 p.m.
Details coming soon.

 

10th Annual Asian Art Lecture – Shahzia Sikander: Collective Behavior

Sunday, April 27, 2025, 2–3 p.m.

Artist Biography

Shahzia Sikander was born in 1969 in Lahore, Pakistan, and earned her BFA in 1991 from the National College of Arts (NCA) in Lahore. She became the first woman to teach in the Miniature Painting Department at the NCA, and was the first artist from the department to challenge the medium’s technical and aesthetic framework. Sikander’s breakthrough work, The Scroll, received national critical acclaim in Pakistan. In 1993, Sikander moved from Lahore to Providence, Rhode Island, to pursue graduate studies at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). After completing her MFA, Sikander moved to Houston, Texas to participate in the Core Residency Program at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston’s Glassell School of Art from 1995 to 1997. Sikander moved to New York in the late 1990s and further developed her interest in deconstructing miniature paintings as well as questioning identity: what it means to not only be a practicing artist in the United States, but also Muslim, Pakistani, and female. Since 2001, Sikander has been creating digital animations, often on a monumental scale, alongside works on paper, murals, and installations. She has continued to experiment across media in recent years, creating sculpture as well as work in painted glass and mosaic.

She has been exhibited widely since the mid-1990s, with major solo exhibitions at Madison Square Park, New York (2023); the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2022); the RISD Museum, Providence (2021-2022); the Morgan Library, New York (2021); the Asia Society Hong Kong (2016); the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2007); the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2000); the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (1999); the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City (1998); and the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago (1998), among others. Her work can be found in the permanent collections of many institutions worldwide, including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Australia; the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi; Hirshorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Sikander is the recipient of the Pollock Prize for Creativity (2023); Fukuoka Arts and Culture Prize; KB17 Karachi Biennale Shahneela and Farhan Faruqui Popular Choice Art Prize (2017); Inaugural Medal of Art, US Department of State (AIE), Washington D.C. (2012); and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship ‘Genius’ Award (2006), among many others. She is represented by Sean Kelly Gallery, New York.

Shahzia Sikander: Collective Behavior is made possible through generous funding from the Terra Foundation for American Art, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Terra Foundation for American Art The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts National Endowment for the Arts

 

Additional support comes from the John and Dorothy Hermanies Fund; Louise H. and David S. Ingalls Foundation; Robert Lehman Foundation; Albert B. Cord Charitable Foundation; Pace Prints, New York; Twelve Gates Arts; anonymous donors, Shakila T. Ahmad; Tanu Bhati; Saba A. Chughtai; Julie and Abhijit Desai; Liz Grubow and Jerry Kathman; JoLynn and Byron Gustin; Syed Zubair Haq; Alina Khan; Zofeen Khan; Samar Kaukab and Haroon Moghul; Helen Little; Soumya S. Patnaik; Ron Pizzuti; Kristi Nelson and Stewart Goldman; and Sara M. Vance Waddell.

Shahzia’s two principal commercial galleries, Sean Kelly Gallery and Pilar Corrias Gallery, have been invaluable supporters and collaborators.