Shahzia Sikander / Pathology of Suspension #10 / 2005 / Ink and gouache on prepared paper / 77.5 x 51.5 in. / Sikkema Jenkins & Co.

Shahzia Sikander / Dissonance to Detour / 2005 / STILL from digital animation / Sikkema Jenkins & Co.

Watch video here…

I am a contemporary artist who grew up in Pakistan but my professional life has been outside of Pakistan from age 22. Though the early part of my career as an artist was established primarily in New York, I have been working on projects around the world in the last several years. I find the terminology and the referencing of work in terms of an east and west paradigm, simplistic and dated. It robs the work of all nuances in meaning. In fact these days the world is small and one should really consider work in terms of some sort of global context of ideas. Work I believe should stand on its own, irrespective of geography. I address the work primarily through the lens of an idea and a related project and there is no place where I could not work.

Shahzia Sikander

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Miriam Shapiro / The Twinning of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden / 1989 / 80″ x 116″, (triptych) / Acrylic on Canvas / Flomenhaft Gallery

I entered the Flomenhaft Gallery knowing Miriam Shapiro’s name but unable to recall any images of her work or even how I knew her name. I probably read about her in an art history book, as she is undoubtedly a pioneer and significant figure in the feminist art movement. Growing up in an upper-middle class university town, it could have easily been that I had seen her work, either originals or reproductions, or, if not her work, derivative pieces hanging on the walls in my friends houses. It may even have even been that I had an art teacher in elementary, middle-, or high school that assigned us a project based on her work, echoing and speaking to her influence and importance.

I mention this because the first association I had walking through the gallery was a strong feeling of American Jewish womanhood, coming of age in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, and living in the present. It made me think of my friends’ mothers, or other women I know in this demographic. That is in no way meant to diminish the work, categorize it, and put it in a nice easy to handle historically and culturally situated box. It speaks to me of women, struggling to stitch together narratives of identity and self-hood, to redefine femininity and womanhood.

In her work, historical and cultural symbols and artifacts are patched together, personalized and given new meaning. Stories are reinterpreted and retold. Fabric, cloth, and thread are woven together with acrylic and a host of other materials to create rich and exciting surfaces. The colors are lush, saturated, and full of life. The overall effect is that her work can feel simultaneously challenging and comforting, familiar and unfamiliar, radical and ordinary. I would guess, an important piece of our response to Miriam’s work, is determined by our own history, our own identity – whether or not we can see parts of ourselves and our own stuggles with identity reflected in her work, and how we think and feel about what we she reveals to us.

Miriam Schapiro’s Mini-Retrospective, March 13 – April 26, 2008, Flomenhaft Gallery, 547 West 27th Street, Suite 308

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Music of Silence IV / 24” x 24” / 2007 / silverpoint / acrylic on wood / © Susan Schwalb. All Rights Reserved. www.susanschwalb.com

I have always been attracted to the mystery and luminosity in silverpoint drawings. I have experiemented with silverpoint and find the technique fascinating – from the delicacy of touch to the tarnishing. Schwalb’s work is the first I have seen where it used in abstraction and in combination with color. I find Schwalb’s work and Agnes Martin’s to be some of the best examples of minimalism.

Excerpt from Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art
Feminist Art Base: Susan Schwalb

Susan Schwalb is one of the foremost figures in the revival of the ancient technique of silverpoint drawing in America. Most of the contemporary artists who draw with a metal stylus continue the tradition of Leonardo and Durer by using the soft, delicate line for figurative imagery. By contrast, Schwalb’s work is resolutely abstract, and her handling of the technique is extremely innovative. Paper is torn and burned to provide an emotionally free and dramatic contrast to the precise linearity of silverpoint. In other works, silverpoint is combined with flat expanses of acrylic paint or gold leaf. Sometimes, subtle shifts of tone and color emerge from the juxtaposition of a wide variety of metals. In recent works, Schwalb abandons the stylus altogether in favor of wide metal bands that achieve a shimmering atmosphere reminiscent of the luminous transparency of watercolor. [Read more...]

www.susanschwalb.com 

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Ghada Amer (American, born Egypt, 1963) / Red Diagonales / 2000 / Acrylic, embroidery, and gel medium on canvas / © Ghada Amer, Courtesy Gagosian Gallery. Private collection

February 16–October 19, 2008
Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, 4th Floor
Brooklyn Museum
www.brooklynmuseum.org

Ghada Amer: Love Has No End, the first U.S. survey of the renowned artist’s work, features some fifty pieces from every aspect of Amer’s career as a painter, sculptor, illustrator, performer, garden designer, and installation artist. These include the iconic Barbie Loves Ken, Ken Loves Barbie (1995/2002), The Reign of Terror (2005), and Big Black Kansas City Painting—RFGA (2005), as well as a generous selection of works never before exhibited in this country.

While she describes herself as a painter and has won international recognition for her abstract canvases embroidered with erotic motifs, Ghada Amer is a multimedia artist whose entire body of work is infused with the same ideological and aesthetic concerns. The submission of women to the tyranny of domestic life, the celebration of female sexuality and pleasure, the incomprehensibility of love, the foolishness of war and violence, and an overall quest for formal beauty, constitute the territory that she explores and expresses in her art. In addition to the erotic paintings for which she is most famous, numerous works devoted to world politics are exhibited, including some of her more recent antiwar pieces.

Ghada Amer: Love Has No End is organized for the Brooklyn Museum by Maura Reilly, Ph.D., Curator of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art.

Also check out this slides show of the installation: http://www.flickr.com/photos/brooklyn_museum/sets/72157603916575553/show/

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