Miniature Artist Shazia Sikander

Shahzia Sikander is from Lahore , Pakistan , born in 1969. She completed undergraduate program of Fine Arts from National College of Arts Lahore, and MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. Indian and Persian miniature painting are her specialization. Shazia has received many awards and honors for her work, including the honorary artist award from the Pakistan Ministry of Culture and National Council of the Arts. She now resides in New York and Texas . Her paintings discover the relationship between the present and the past and the richness of multicultural identities. Bashir Ahmed is one of her teacher who taught her and others, including Ambreen Butt and Imran Qureshi, in the late 1980s and early '90s through a meticulous training in the craft of miniature painting.

Often impersonal art form, she imbued it with a personal experiences, mixing the Eastern spotlight on precision and tactic with a Western emphasis on imaginative, subjective look she became an specialist in this technique-driven miniature art. Shazia has brought miniature painting into the realm of contemporary art. Shazia’s aspiration not to be labeled, either culturally or artistically, is a major part of what motivate her as an artist.

In the mid-1990s, her initial works prompted artists and critics to bring in the Shazia Sikander with many other artists whose work dealt with subject of personal and traditional identity. She was nominated in the renowned Whitney Biennial in 1997, only two years after completing her master of fine arts degree from the Rhode Island School of Design, and since has participated in major exhibitions in New York , Philadelphia , Cleveland , Chicago , Houston and Los Angeles , as well as in Canada , Spain , France , Germany , Italy , Australia and her homeland Pakistan .









Some of other awards are;

Young Global leader, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, 2006

Tamgha-e-imtiaz, National Medal of Honor, Government of Pakistan 2005

Commendation Award, Mayor's Office, City of New York 2003

South Asian Women's Creative Collective Achievement Award 1999

The Joan Mitchell Award 1998-99

The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award 1997

Core Fellowship, Glassel School of Art, Museum of Fine Arts , Houston 1995-97

Graduate Fellowship Award, Rhode Island School of Design 1993-95

Shakir Ali Award/Kipling award, (highest merit award) National College of Arts Lahore1993

Haji Sharif Award, (excellence in Miniature Painting) National College of Arts, Lahore

Distinction Award, Thesis Project, National College of Arts , Lahore1992