‘Wholeness is not the same as access’: Shahzia Sikander on reworking miniature painting in Frieze Masters magazine

'A tradition can be entirely intact and still be exiled from the people who most need to touch it. Exiled too from its own credit: its seriality and layered narrative anticipate strategies later called modern or postmodern, yet art history’s family tree still runs almost entirely through Europe. My interest in reworking miniature painting comes from a desire to question these power structures, particularly through feminist perspectives that reconsider whose stories matter and how they are represented.

My most recent animation, 3 to 12 Nautical Miles (2026), commissioned by M+ in Hong Kong for its façade, made its London debut this summer at Victoria Miro. Extending the Padshahnama’s language, it traces the Mughal court’s own decline into the East India Company’s rise, and onward into Qing China, asking where, in the water between three and 12 nautical miles, sovereignty is still permitted to live.'