This scene—an example of Sikander’s early interest in fantastic creatures—refers to the extraordinary sixteenth-century manuscript known as the Shahnama of Shah Tahmasp, now disassembled. Based on a leaf at the Smithsonian’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Sikander’s version focuses on the simurgh, a magical bird from Persian mythology. The simurgh symbolizes divinity in the twelfth-century Sufi allegorical tale The Conference of the Birds. In Islamic belief, birds in flight are associated with the ascension of the soul to a higher realm. Birds are rich in personal meaning for Sikander, who frequently equates them with imagination.

In these two compositions that preserve the format of manuscript illustrations and its decorative framing, Sikander portrays her friend Mirrat. In Mirrat I, she appears at Lahore Fort, a citadel in the capital city. Mirrat II shows her in an empty Sikh haveli, a historical home abandoned after the partition of India and Pakistan. The repetition of the figure suggests the passage of time—a traditional device in Mughal paintings. Sikander adapted the manuscript trope of the waiting woman by depicting Mirrat with a range of nuanced, contemplative expressions.

In this composition, her NCA thesis, Sikander depicted herself within a house inspired by her teenage home and rendered in a style that references Safavid painting traditions. “I am a floating ghostlike presence in every chapter or segment,” she said, “privy to the unfolding narrative while functioning as a channel through which an observer can access and navigate the painting. My diaphanous moving and morphing form is rendered in white gouache, and one can never see my face. I was making a statement on the restlessness of youth and the quest for identity. The claiming of the freedom for the female body in the domestic setting.” Although the portrayal is informed by a range of traditions, everything about The Scroll—its subject, format, setting, and details—was newly imagined. Painted over a year and a half, this was a breakthrough work not just for Sikander but also for the viability of manuscript painting traditions for contemporary practice.

In this more abstract version of The Scroll, Sikander refers to the tradition of the Gandharan Buddhist birch-bark scrolls. She incorporates bark into the painting, inscribing its materiality with light and form to extract a psychological dimension from the space. The activity in this series of vignettes is visually linked yet mysterious. Seen through windows and mirrors, the figures depicted feel hidden. At the center of the composition a woman lies on the ground, seemingly shattered by the bark and the house itself.

Sikander made this drawing as an exercise in traditional manuscript painting, employing the practice passed on to her by Bashir Ahmad, her professor at the NCA. The method starts with preparing the paper. Dampened cotton-fiber sheets are layered together with wheat-starch paste and a preservative. After the paper is pressed and dried, both sides are burnished with a sea shell, creating a smooth, luminous surface. For this work, the paper was also stained with several applications of tea. Using a brush fitted with only a few hairs, Sikander carefully outlined the image. She then applied layers of transparent wash and gold leaf. Like several other works in the exhibition, this painting was completed over a number of years—typical of Sikander’s process then and now.

This full-color painting was likely completed while Sikander was teaching at the NCA, as an example to show students. Once the paper had been prepared and the design transferred to the sheet, watercolor was carefully added using a dry brush. In this technique, called pardakht, the painting’s color is built up through many layers of quick, short brushstrokes, adeptly and meditatively applied with a minimum of pigment to avoid disrupting the delicate surface. The richness and depth achieved by this method is noticeable throughout the sheet, even in the white cloth.

This painting is based on a Safavid work— dated to seventeenth-century Iran—in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which Sikander copied from a reproduction. Although copying historical examples was part of the training at the NCA, students had little access to original works: due to the legacy of colonialism, most South and Central Asian manuscript illustrations now reside in Western museums. “My first visual encounter with miniature painting was with its facsimile,” Sikander recalled. “But even in printed reproductions, the inherent eroticism and beauty of the works captivated my imagination and challenged my assumptions.”

Sikander’s appreciation of language is expressed in her work through the wit of titles and her incorporation of script. In this example, the calligraphy of horses in motion was inspired by her childhood experience of reciting and memorizing the Quran in Arabic before understanding it in Urdu or English. “The ritual was to first get acquainted with the aural and visual before the meaning. It resulted in this amazing visual memory where the beauty of the Arabic script superseded everything else.”