Portrait of the Artist

Accompanying text, called colophon, by Ayad Akhtar.
Issued in portfolio.
Limited signed edition of 40 copies.
The Morgan has copy no. 19.
Sikander is a Pakistani American artist who since the late 1980s has engaged and updated the tradition of Central and South-Asian manuscript painting. She is at the front of a movement that is sometimes referred to as "neo-miniature" painting, though she is critical of the word miniature for its colonial underpinnings. Sikander works in a variety of mediums, but primarily on paper, where she often combines traditional motifs and materials (like vegetable color and tea), with contemporary feminist and post-colonial commentary. This suite of four prints is comprised of two portraits of Sikander and two of the playwright Ayad Akhtar. Their images are layered with silhouettes of the "buraq," the winged horse with a human face who conveyed the Prophet Muhammed to heaven; celestial landscapes that refer to 15th- and 16th-century paintings of the Prophet's ascension, or "mi'raj;" and maps. The result is a palimpsest that reflects the complex artistic identities of Sikander and Akhtar. "I evolved as a shape-shifter," Sikander has said. The prints are accompanied by a text by Akhtar, called "The Breath of Miraj," which addresses the condition of the Muslim artist in the West and the nature of creative inspiration.