Shahzia Sikander: Collective Behavior
Palazzo Soranzo Van Axel, Venice, 2024

A Collateral Event of the 60^th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, Shahzia Sikander: Collective Behavior is the most comprehensive presentation of the artist’s work to date, bringing together more than 30 works made over three and a half decades, including new site-specific drawings and glasswork created for this exhibition.

For more than three decades, Sikander has been reframing South Asian visual histories through a contemporary feminist perspective. Working in a variety of mediums—painting, drawing, print, digital animation, mosaic, sculpture, and glass work—she reimagines the past for our present moment. Collective Behavior traces the evolution and expansion of Sikander’s practice over the course of her career, which has been rooted in a recurring lexicon of forms, figures, and ideas. 

Shahzia Sikander: Collective Behavior is co-curated by Ainsley M. Cameron, Ph.D., Curator of South Asian Art, Islamic Art, and Antiquities at the Cincinnati Art Museum, and Emily Liebert, Ph.D., Curator of Contemporary Art at the Cleveland Museum of Art, and presented by The Cincinnati Art Museum (CAM) and the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA).