This painting, created for the animation SpiNN, includes several scenes of gopis in an act of rebellion. The gopis join together to create the beast that Krishna rides into the durbar hall. Once inside, they take over the space. Traditional Indian manuscript paintings typically feature only a single prominent gopi, Radha, the favored consort of Krishna. As Sikander multiplies the gopis’ numbers, she gives them all the agency of Radha, speaking to the power of a collective feminine space.
Shahzia Sikander (born 1969)
SpiNN (III), 2003
Watercolor on tea-stained wasli paper
Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, Promised gift of Jeanne and Michael Klein in honor of Annette DiMeo Carlozzi, 2015
© Shahzia Sikander. Courtesy: the artist, Sean Kelly, New York and Pilar Corrias, London.
Shazia Sikandar: I started experimenting with animation in 2000. And it came very naturally to me in my process because I was always building layers in my paintings to create density and transparency. And sometimes there are more than 10 layers added into a single detailed small painting. So with that in mind, I thought I would register and document or scan every other layer of the painting as I built it. And that's where SpiNN emerges from, is it's in dialogue, in relationship to its painting, the counterpoint. And one of the most interesting shifts that happened in this work was when I painted the bodies of the female and then chose to eliminate them. But I wanted to retain some of their references in the work. So as they gather, their hair disassociates from their bodies. And that little element is small enough that it started to operate as a particle system. And I ran with that idea. So eventually, so much of the later animations are built up with the particle system in mind. And here you see the hair function almost like swarms or birds or bats or insects. And it can oscillate between a singular element, which is almost like the DNA of the feminine body. But then in its multiplication, it can also conjure up multiple different associations.