KARACHI – Shahzia Sikander is a contemporary artist who grew up in Pakistan, but her professional life has been outside the country from age 22. Though the early part of her career as an artist was established primarily in New York, she has been working on projects around the world in the past several years.
She finds the terminology and the referencing of work in terms of an east and west paradigm simplistic and dated. “It robs the work of all nuances in meaning,” she says.
In fact, she believes, these days the world is small and one should really consider work in terms of some sort of global context of ideas.
Work, to her, should stand on its own, irrespective of geography. “I address the work primarily through the lens of an idea and a related project, and there is no place where I could not work,” she explains.
Photos courtesy Shahzia Sikander
