SpiNN

Shahzia Sikander is an innovator who has revived miniaturist painting as modern art. Having studied miniaturist art at the National College of Arts, Lahore, the artist moved to America and, within the miniaturist tradition, set out modernist themes by mixing various cultural traditions, complex framing and non-western expressions of space. This piece is the first stage of a digital animation put together as an experiment in miniaturist art in the early 2000s. The title is a portmanteau of 'spin' and 'CNN.' Like a running sequence of unrelated news items on CNN, the images repeatedly flock together, conjoin, disassemble and convulse disturbingly. In addition to the 'miniaturist' traditional style, this use of images also shows the artist's efforts to experiment. (YY)