Loss, Longing, Belonging: Shahzia Sikander’s Khorfakkan Series ~ a Discussion at NYU

Join NYU Abu Dhabi Institute in New York on March 7th for an exciting dialogue, presented by the Intersectional Feminist/Queer Studies Collective with 19 Washington Square North, and co-sponsored by the Grey Art Gallery.

Alongside the opening of the exhibition of work by Pakistani-American artist Shahzia Sikander at 19WSN, the gallery opens its doors to a dialogue between Sikander and Gayatri Gopinath (Director, Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, NYU). Sikander’s photographs, initially taken in 2012, depict the ruin and desolation of a South Asian movie theater and its sole caretaker in Khorfakkan, Sharjah, and speak poignantly to the questions of home, displacement, belonging, and unbelonging that touch the lives of many South Asian migrants in the UAE.

Renowned Pakistani-American artist Shahzia Sikander is widely celebrated for expanding and subverting pre-modern and classical Central and South Asian miniature painting traditions and launching the form known today as neo-miniature. Sikander has been the recipient of many notable awards, including most recently the Fukuoka Arts and Culture Prize in 2022, as well as the Asia Society Award for Significant Contribution to Contemporary Art in 2015, a Medal of Art by the U.S. Department of State in 2012, and a MacArthur Fellowship in 2006. In 2021, in conjunction with her major traveling exhibition, an extensive monograph on the artist was published. Entitled Extraordinary Realities, the publication is an examination of Sikander’s work from 1987 to 2003. Sikander’s work has been exhibited and collected internationally, including solo exhibitions at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in Texas; the Morgan Library and Museum in New York; the RISD Museum in Providence, Rhode Island; Jesus College in Cambridge, United Kingdom; the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, Canada; and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. Her public installation Havah… to breathe, air, life is currently on view in Madison Square Park and the courthouse through June 4, 2023.

Artist Shahzia Sikander in conversation with Professor Gayatri Gopinath, a talk on Loss, Longing, Belonging: Shahzia Sikander’s Khorfakkan Series, will take place on March 7th from 6:00 to 7:00pm at 19 Washington Square Park North. RSVP to Attend this In-Person Event.

The exhibition of Shahzia Sikander’s photographs, Loss, Longing, Belonging: Shahzia Sikander’s Khorfakkan Series, is curated by Kerry Barrett, PhD, Associate Dean of Global Programs, NYUAD, and will be on view from March 2 to July 28, 2023 at NYU’s (19WSN) 19 Washington Square North. The gallery is free and open to the public.

While you’re there, walk over to NYU Grey Art Gallery, 100 Washington Square East, for ‘Mostly New: Selections from the NYU Art Collection‘ on view to June 28, 2023.