♪ (intro music) ♪
(water drips)
SHAHZIA SIKANDER: There's something about the process, the miniature process of
painting in this scale, primarily, which keeps it in control.
I'm basically staining the paper
and it has to be a very even stain.
It's slow, and you have to
keep the edge of the tea really, sort of,
always in flow, so that you just drip the
whole edge down steadily.
It's very meditative
and there's a sense of familiarity,
because a lot of years have gone in here.
(rubbing paper)
One thing I've learned is respect for
tradition and respect for patience
(laughs) because you just cannot achieve
anything... You can't achieve a painting if
you don't... You need time.
Time is the key.
I can't do a show and prepare a body of work in a year. I need three to four years
♪ (contemplative music) ♪
Miniature painting comes out of book illustration, manuscript painting...
It's an old art form.
All the strange, stacked-up perspective,
interior spaces and suggestions of
windows and doors, which suggest the
outside world or the spiritual world, or some notion of perfection.
♪ (contemplative music) ♪
That kind of jewel-like translucency that
comes through is only because you have a discipline behind it.
(paper rubbing)
It takes many, many layers - at least ten
to twenty layers of different colour - to
build it up. You have to be very careful,
because if your brush is loaded with too
much water, you'll lift off the earlier
layers of pigment also, because they're
not sealed. So, it's practice.
Sometimes, when I'm not in practice,
all of ten years of experience doesn't mean a thing! (laughs)
When we were studying in school in
Pakistan, my teacher used to have us sit
on the floor on white sheets and you had to leave your shoes outside.
Everything was very precise and very clean and very minimal.
You worked on your work and did eye exercises. You kept your work at least
a foot away from your eyes. It was very methodical. It was very ritualistic, also.
♪ (contemplative music) ♪
I feel like why I loved miniature painting early on... For me, it was painting.
I was looking and understanding the formal
sensibility of painting - except I was not
painting on canvas; I was painting on paper with a particular set of materials.
But it was all about surface, palette, form, composition, stylization...
And self-expression came later.
♪ (contemplative music) ♪
A lot of my work is deeply personal and drawn on memory.
If you look at this particular border,
it's called 'Writing the Written'.
Here, the text becomes more like horses.
There's a suggestion of movement.
That aspect is my experience of reading
the Quran, where I would read it with no
particular understanding because I was a child. I could read Arabic but I couldn't
understand it. The memory of it is this amazing visual memory where the beauty of
the written word supersedes everything else. The meaning is there, but it's not
just the meaning - it's the ability of the
written text to take you to that other level.
♪ (contemplative music) ♪
My whole purpose of taking on miniature painting was to break the tradition,
to experiment with it, to find new ways of making meaning,
to question the relevance of it.
(paper rustles)
The starting point in all my work, whether it's small or it's large,
actually begins as simple drawings, which are done on transparent tissue paper.
(paper rustles)
A lot of the images that exist in my work
were happening because I was interested in
subverting Hindu with Muslim and Muslim with Hindu.
Having grown up as a Muslim in Pakistan,
I didn't have that much information about Hindu mythology. When I came here,
I realized that these were the things which still interested me.
(paper rustles)
I was looking at the idea of the Hindu goddess. It didn't matter how
many hands it had, just the notion that it was the female body with several hands
was important. But the goddess had a very specific face.
Here, I was stripping off the face and putting a headdress, like the veil,
on top of it. Yet the veil is on top of a Hindu goddess.
Not to underestimate what's behind the veil.
The miniatures bring the word 'veil' into the equation.
It kind of connects you to a Muslim identity or a woman's identity.
These are very loaded issues to take on,
because anything and everything
associated with Islam is either terrorism or oppression for women.
Culturally, it's not my experience.
My grandparents, my parents... Everybody was very, very progressive,
very supportive people.
My grandfather was very encouraging towards careers for women - for everybody.
All the girls in the family did something with their lives.
SIKANDER'S MOTHER: But then I was more keen... "If she's going to the National
College of Art, then she might as well do architecture, which has scope." You know,
when she said "Fine Arts," one was a bit...
You know, at the most, you just hang a few paintings in the house...
Whether you have a future or not... (BOTH LAUGH)
- So I was skeptical about that... - (SHAHZIA) Sorry!
(machinery whirs)
(rustling)
(SHAHZIA) This type of work for me was
just the opposite of the process of doing miniature painting.
(machinery whirs)
(paper rustles)
This particular installation is much, much more spontaneous
and it's always a challenge, because the decisions made are fast.
It involves my entire body. I'm working within the space and I'm up and
down the ladders and I'm painting,
and everything kind of happens from start till end within four to five days.
So there's a certain energy which comes out.
(paper rustles)
There is a certain sense of a low relief,
where several drawings have been hung on top of each other.
(paper slides)
There's no intention to hide anything.
Everything is very visible.
The paper is transparent. It flows, it moves...
The idea comes out of this whole
relationship to veiling and revealing.
(distant footsteps, paper rustles)
I'm always taking photographs, doing sketches or taking notes.
Then, I carry them wherever I go.
I brought so much stuff from Pakistan and then so much stuff from Texas,
and every time I sit to do some work, all of it is opened up.
(machinery whirs) (switch clicks)
For me, it's always like these divine circles.
(laughs) You know, you go and you experience
something, and you come back right where you started.
When I'm working large and I paint
and do murals, the next thing is: always I come back to miniature painting.
I can hate miniature for a while,
because it's frustrating, for all the different reasons
of doing something so labor-intensive which takes years to make.
It's always like, 'Why do I do this?'
And I'll let go, and I'll do something else,
but I always come back to it.
Maybe because the sheer act of doing it gives me a certain sort of peace.
♪ (contemplative music) ♪
♪ (outro music) ♪
VOICEOVER: To order a 2-tape set of art:21 - Art in the 21st Century
on video cassette or the companion book to the program,
call PBS Home Video at 1-800-PLAY-PBS.
To learn more about art:21 - Art in the 21st Century,
and to download the free Teacher's Guide, please visit PBS online at PBS.org
♪ (outro music) ♪