The Last Post was inspired by Sikander’s ongoing interest in the colonial history of the sub-continent and the British opium trade with China. In this animation, layers of images, abstract forms, meaning, and metaphorical associations slowly unfold at the same time that more visual myths are created. The identity of the protagonist, a red-coated official, is indeterminate and suggestive of both the mercantilist policies that led to the Opium Wars with China and the cultural authority claimed by the Company school of painting over colonial India. Though situated in a particular historical context, The Last Post remains an open-ended narrative with infinite possible interpretations. The work’s scope and complexity is expanded further by its sound element, which was created by Du Yun, an artist and composer based in New York City.
Shahzia Sikander is known for her richly layered and intricately detailed graphite, ink, and gouache paintings. She studied miniature painting in the late 1980s at the National College of Art in Lahore, Pakistan, with the forms and techniques of Indo-Persian miniatures heavily influencing her approach. Sikander’s practice explores the concepts of “East” and “West,” using traditional strategies of storytelling and themes of popular mythology to deconstruct the postcolonial legacy of the Indo-Persian region. In 2001, Sikander began to employ digital animation to create video works based on her drawings. Her practice traverses painting, drawing, animation, installation, and video, to radically rearticulate the tradition of miniature painting. Sikhander uses the technique to address contemporary issues, including the Western fear of Islam, the globalization of Western ways of living, and gender identity, focusing specifically on Muslim women in the West. The artist’s use of a traditional and scholarly approach to discuss the conflicts in the global condition creates a unique oeuvre–the digital animations, breathing new life into Mughal-era miniature painting.
Herculine’s Prophecy by Juliana Huxtable features a kneeling demon-figure on what appears to be a screen-print, placed on a wooden table, which has then been photographed and digitally altered to appear like a book cover, with a title and subtitle across the top, and a poem written across the bottom...
Bowers’ Radical Hospitality (2015) is a sculptural contradiction: its red and blue neon letters proclaim the words of the title, signaling openness and generosity, while the barbed wires that encircle the words give another message entirely...
Ramirez’s The International Sail is the fifth in a series that features an upside-down worn out, mended and fragmented boat sail...
Los rastreadores is a two-channel video by Claudia Joskowicz narrating the story of a fictitious drug lord, Ernesto Suarez, whose character is based on the well-known Bolivian drug dealer, Roberto Suárez...
Human Quarry is a large work on paper by Leslie Shows made of a combination of acrylic paint and collage...
Milena Bonilla’s discursive practice explores connections among economics, territory, and politics through everyday interventions...
In the series Horizons (2010), Lipps uses appropriation to riff on Modernism’s fascination with abstract form...
The artist writes about her work Borrando la Frontera, a performance done at Tijuana/San Diego border: “I visually erased the train rails that serve as a divider between the US and Mexico...
State Terrorism in the ultimate form of Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood features a portrait of the artist wearing a zipped utilitarian jacket reminiscent of a worker’s uniform, with one arm behind his back as if forced to ingest a bundle of stick—a literal portrayal to the definition of fascism...
Tania Libre is a film by Lynn Hershman Leeson centered around renowned artist Tania Bruguera and her experience as a political artist and activist under the repressive government of her native Cuba...
Houck’s Peg and John was made as part of a series of photographic works that capture objects from the artist’s childhood...
The lengthy titles in Chen Xiaoyun’s work often appear as colophons to his photographs that invite the viewer to a process of self realization through contemplating the distance between word and image...
The threshold in contemporary Pakistan between the security of private life and the increasingly violent and unpredictable public sphere is represented in Abidi’s 2009 series Karachi ...
In this work, a woman sits on a couch with her shirt pulled up to expose her pierced nipples, which are connected by a chain...
The primary interest in the trilogy is Joskowicz’s use of cinematic space, with long tracking shots that portray resistance to habitual viewing experiences of film and television...
Catherine Opie’s candid photograph Cathy (bed Self-portrait) (1987) shows the artist atop a bed wearing a negligee and a dildo; the latter is attached to a whip that she holds in her teeth...
These hand drawn maps are part of an ongoing series begun in 2008 in which Gupta asks ordinary people to sketch outlines of their home countries by memory...