'The visual lexicon in my work has come about through a recurring set of images, forms, gestures, symbols, and material choices that function like a language over time... The iconography that emerged formed a repertoire of figures, often female and sometimes androgynous, carrying ideas of severance, absence, censorship, and renewal.'
'My interest in reworking miniature painting comes from a desire to question power structures, particularly through feminist perspectives that reconsider whose stories matter. My journey has been about creating an emotional, not only intellectual, dialogue with miniature painting within a changing geopolitical order around global art, where formal, cultural, and geographic boundaries remain porous.'
Image: installation of Shahzia Sikander, 3 to 12 Nautical Miles, 2026
Co-commissioned by M+ and Art Basel
Courtesy M+ and the artist
