'For artist Shahzia Sikander, London has never been neutral ground. “The city is one I have circled for decades,” she says. Trained in the traditional practice of miniature painting, works that the city once collected, catalogued, and carried home, Sikander has returned to London many times over the course of a career whose subjects have always led back here. Her first London exhibition with Victoria Miro since the gallery announced her representation, coinciding with this year’s programme, felt like a reckoning long in the making.
“London is no longer simply a repository I visited,” she tells me. “It has become an interlocutor.” — Shreya Ajmani
Image: installation view, Shahzia Sikander: High Seas; Closed Skies
© Shahzia Sikander
Courtesy the artist and Victoria Miro
