Pakistani artist Shahzia Sikander navigates her country's complex past-a new monograph tells her story

"Art in Pakistan, like its culture and language, has never quite fit the nation state that now contains it. Instead, it arises from the visual traditions of the Indian subcontinent and the Islamic world, passed through the refining fire of global modernism and the productive alienation of political trauma. No one exemplifies this better than Shahzia Sikander, born in Lahore a generation after the Partition of India (1947) and moving on to the international stage in the years before 9/11."

"Alongside her near-contemporary Imran Qureshi, she is one of the best-known artists of Pakistani origin alive today. Both are known for their contemporary miniatures, a genre almost uniquely associated with Pakistan and particularly with the National College of Arts (NCA) in Lahore, one of the oldest art schools in Asia. In the mid-19th century, the British endowed Lahore with a museum and an art school: they knew art was a potent expression of power."

"First, they razed Delhi and Lucknow to the ground; then they taught Indians to paint, print and sculpt. The aim was to preserve the aesthetic history of the subcontinent while inculcating "modern"-and therefore Western-ways of making art. In the leafy quadrangles of what was then Lahore's Mayo School (until 1958), artists were taught on the Kensington model, while the wonders of Agra and Gandhara were arrayed next door in the Lahore Museum-the Ajaib-Ghar or "Wonder House"."

Pakistani art emerges from interwoven visual traditions of the Indian subcontinent and the Islamic world, transformed by global modernism and political trauma. The contemporary miniature genre has become a distinctive practice associated with Lahore and the National College of Arts (NCA). Shahzia Sikander and Imran Qureshi represent internationally recognized practitioners who rose from Lahore's artistic milieu. The NCA traces roots to the colonial-era Mayo School and nearby Lahore Museum, institutions that combined preservation of local aesthetics with Western academic models. 19th-century British patronage reshaped artistic education by teaching painting, printing and sculpture alongside display of subcontinental treasures. The NCA fostered dialogue between Cubist modernists and traditional ustad lineages.

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