Sikander’s work often reimagines familiar figures to locate new interpretations and tell richer stories. She explains that this image could represent “the transmutation of the Hindu gods Krishna and Vishnu, an inversion of the Greek snake-haired Medusa, or the Greek hero Heracles with Krishna (being linked to the mythologies of the serpent monsters Hydra and Kaliya).” As in many of the works in her Uprooted Order series, Sikander presents tradition not as a static notion, but as “alive—a space of unexpected juxtapositions.”
Shahzia Sikander (born 1969)
Uprooted Order 2, 1997
Watercolor and gold paint on tea-stained wasli paper
Collection of A. G. Rosen
© Shahzia Sikander. Courtesy: the artist, Sean Kelly, New York and Pilar Corrias, London.