My entire practice examines the provenance and

canon of Indo-Persian miniature painting.

While playing with its context, I see this work very much in the same vein.

There's a lot of play on image within image, multiple meanings,

forms that symbolize one thing while they might mean another, sort of a playful

attitude where it might imply a story but never really provides any narrative.

And so when I isolate and multiply,

they may transform into bats or floating helmets or

whimsical forms and lose their actual relationship to the.

So the relationship to miniature painting might not be very obvious when look at

the work, but it definitely still informing the way I use drawing as a tool.

I see the forms in the work as being buoyant, floating,

maybe in a temporary state of being both static and moving at the same time.

For example, the separate grid like unit forms that this work

encompasses can be reorganized every time.

And this is really about creating a gap, or a distance,

or a break, and it's sort of a metaphor for

an investigation, or exploration of spaces.

That in between spaces, whether they are political, transgressive or

ideal or the space of the fantastical or the subliminal.

5.10 Shahzia Sikander. Candied. 2003