Tying in personal and cultural histories, Shahzia Sikander's vibrant practice will be given new context in an afternoon convening featuring scholarly, artistic, and curatorial perspectives on the work and its reception. New York-based curator and early supporter of Sikander’s practice, Eugenie Tsai, joins composer and Harvard professor Vijay Iyer, and Cleveland Museum of Art curator Sonya Rhie Mace for a series of interdisciplinary presentations. The presentations will be followed by a discussion with Shahzia Sikander moderated by Asian Art Museum curator Padma Maitland.
This event will take place on Thursday, November 13, 2025, 1:00pm to 3:30pm PT
Please register for the event here.
Additional Programming
Please join the Cantor Arts Center to hear internationally-renowned, New York-based artist Shahzia Sikander as she delivers the 2025 Distinguished Lecture in Asian Art in Honor of the Lijin Collection. Sikander (born 1969, Lahore, Pakistan) will discuss her practice and the ways she has reframed South Asian visual histories through a contemporary feminist perspective for over three decades.
Shahzia Sikander’s command of diverse media and traditions, from historical South Asian miniature paintings to digital animation, reveals a vibrant visual universe that reimagines the past for our present moment. Throughout her practice, she considers diasporic experiences, histories of colonialism, and Western relations with the global south and the wider Islamic world, often through the lens of gender and body politics. Sikander is a recipient of the MacArthur “genius award” and the Pollock Prize for Creativity, among others.
This program is presented in conjunction with Shahzia Sikander: Collective Behavior, a career-spanning exhibition co-organized by the Cincinnati Art Museum and Cleveland Museum of Art, with the Cantor serving as the final and only West Coast venue for the show. The exhibition, on view at the Cantor from September 17, 2025 through January 25, 2026, was originally presented by the Cleveland Museum of Art and Cincinnati Art Museum as a Collateral Event of the 60th International Art Exhibition—La Biennale di Venezia.
This event will take place on Thursday, November 13, 2025 6:00pm PT
Please register for the event here.