The following is a guest blog post by Anita Thompson, Head of the Visual Arts Department at Lincoln School.

Figurative Sculpture and Life Drawing classes visit the RISD Museum to view the Shahzia Sikander Extraordinary Realities Exhibit, December 7, 2021

“Born and Raised in Pakistan, Shahzia Sikander gained international recognition in the 1990s for her pioneering role in bringing painting traditions from South and Central Asia into a dialogue with contemporary practices. Her work interrogates cultural identity, racial narratives, colonial and post-colonial histories, and issues of gender and sexuality.” Jan Howard, Houghton P. Metcalf Jr. Curator of Prints, Drawings and Photographs, RISD Museum

The exhibition includes artworks from the first 15 years of her artistic career. Including manuscript paintings while she was at the National College of Arts in Lahore, Pakistan, to her time at RISD where she received her MFA. The exhibition continues on to include works from her career while located in Houston and finally New York.

Earlier in the year the Figurative Sculpture and Life Drawing class had been studying her work, themes, and methodology when I found out that her work was coming to RISD. The class was beyond delighted to hear that they were going to see her art in person! While at the exhibit each student was asked to draw either an image or part of an image that interested them, as well as take a picture of one of her pieces. When we returned to school, during the following class, each student shared their drawings and talked about the piece of art they chose to document. The conversations based on this work were rich and fruitful as they gave the student the opportunity to talk about a current artist whose work intersects with themes and artistic methodology that they are extremely interested in.