Shahzia Sikander's pioneering practice takes Indo-Persian miniature painting as a point of departure. Sikander received her BFA in 1991 from the National College of Arts, Lahore, Pakistan and her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1995. She challenges the strict formal tropes of miniature painting as well as its medium-based restrictions by experimenting with scale and media. Her process-based work is concerned with examining the forces at stake in contested cultural and political histories. Sikander is a recipient of the U.S. Department of State’s inaugural Medal of Art, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation “genius award” and her work is included in many permanent collections such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, MoMA, Guggenheim, Hirshhorn, MFA Houston, Princeton University and SFMoMA among others. Sikander currently has two solo exhibitions on view, one at the Tufts University Museum, Boston and the other at the Guggenheim, Bilbao.