<p>Shahzia Sikander (Urdu: شازیه سکندر; born 1969) is an artist from Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan. Sikander is a Pakistani American artist, now living in New York City, who specializes in Mughal miniature painting and Persian miniature painting. She has also created murals, installations, mixed-media works and performance art. She is a 2006 recipient of the MacArthur Fellows Program "genius grant". She earned a BFA in 1992 at the National College of Arts in Lahore, Pakistan; and an MFA in 1995 at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island.
She has had solo exhibitions at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (1999/2000) and at the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago (1998). Her work has been shown in group exhibitions at the Whitney Museum (1999/2000 and 1999), at the Third Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Brisbane, Australia (1999), and at the Ludwig Museum, Cologne, Germany (1999).
Sikander has been schooled in the miniature painting tradition of Pakistan, and combines the historic iconography and technique with her own aesthetics resulting in a hybrid of traditional and contemporary styles. The imagery in her work references the tensions</p>