Sampling like a DJ

Shahzia Sikander’s exhibition at the San Diego Museum of Art is no blockbuster. In fact, it’s a refreshing example of the anti-blockbuster -- a small, focused show grounded in the museum’s permanent collection. The second in SDMA’s “Contemporary Links” series, it makes a compelling case for the continuing relevance and generosity of art of the past.

Self-consciousness about artistic lineage runs high among artists these days. For some, it’s a simple matter of drawing inspiration from predecessors. For others, referencing past art is a strategy laced with ambition, a way of building credibility, establishing pedigree. No artist can avoid engaging with art history, but each shapes that conversation differently. The Sikander show offers an opportunity to eavesdrop on one such conversation. What emerges is a lovely and engaging dialogue, not deeply revealing but evocative.

Sikander, born in Pakistan in 1969 and based in the U.S. since 1993, was trained in the traditional practice of miniature painting at the National College of Arts in Lahore. Over several generations, teachers there had raised the stature of the traditional art and had given students like Sikander the foundation to infuse it with contemporary feeling.

For the show, the museum invited Sikander to create a “contemporary link” to works in its permanent collection, a selection of miniatures from the Edwin Binney 3rd Collection of South Asian paintings. (The series, conceived by curator Betti-Sue Hertz, premiered last year with Regina Frank’s performance and installation in response to the museum’s stunning Juan Sanchez Cotan still life, “Quince, Cabbage, Melon, and Cucumber.”)

The specific paintings that Sikander responded to for this show hang in a small, separate gallery dedicated to the Binney collection. (Hers hang in the nearby rotunda.) The Binney collection paintings make up a show of their own -- not selected by Sikander -- called “Sultans and Sufis: Paintings From the Deccan.” Dating from the 16th to 19th centuries, the paintings reflect the heterogenous population of the Deccani Sultanates. The imagery derives from Sufi mysticism as well as Hindu mythology, the styles ranging from precise naturalism to Persian-influenced patterning and flat, schematic compartmentalization of space.

Sikander’s project, titled “Flip Flop,” has three parts: a window installation, a wall relief and a set of paintings on paper. In both the window installation and wall relief, images common to traditional miniature paintings (horses, mythical figures, monkeys) and a sprinkling of contemporary references (military planes, soccer balls) float in abstract space. For the window piece, the silhouetted images were cut from colored polyester film and adhered to roughly a third of the glass panes of a large window rising behind the museum staircase. Light and sprightly in tangerine, aqua, lime and fuchsia, the installation could easily be mistaken for the residue of a school field trip.

The wall relief incorporates a related lexicon of images, this time painted on a free-standing wall and on panels of pale yellow tissue paper mounted in layers slightly removed from the wall. It’s a bit more nuanced than the window installation, but also lacks synergy.

The heart of the show is Sikander’s series of ink and gouache works on dusty rose-colored paper, which correspond one-to-one with the Deccani miniatures. In one piece, a female figure with the blue skin usually reserved to identify Krishna stands behind a seated man and covers his eyes with her delicate hands. She seems to have interrupted the man’s reading, for he holds a book open before him. From its pages rises a fizz of red-violet dots.

In another piece, Sikander creates what looks like a block of text out of rows of flowers and leaves, accented by an occasional calligraphic dash or dot. Another image, lusciously painted in fluid earthen reds, features a young woman in self-reflection, fingering one of the strands of white beads around her neck.

Sikander likens what she does in her art to the sampling techniques of a DJ. She pulls what she wants from another, established context and edits, adds, mutates, taking liberty throughout. Each of the images in her paintings relates to the subjects (and often the form, as well) of her sources, but some elements are abbreviated, others amended. In the Deccani counterpart to the portrait of the woman, the subject sits at a window holding a bird. She, too, wears white beads around her neck, but Sikander has extended and abstracted those beads into a seductive shimmer of white dots not just encircling her neck but also draping over her head and arm like a diaphanous veil.

Sikander’s work, again like a DJ’s, falls somewhere between homage and subversion. She copies and she deviates. She releases images and forms from their traditional narrative bounds in the older miniatures and sets them afloat on pages unburdened by the conventions of gravity and the implications of text. She assigns them no illustrative function. The images don’t record events, portray leaders in action, or retell familiar stories, as in traditional miniatures. They simply conjure forms and evoke conditions: “To Imagine,” “To Mistake,” “To Reflect,” “To Emerge.”

Her paintings don’t match the older miniatures in complexity and depth, but they are beautiful comments from an art historically less prescribed place and time. Everything about Sikander’s images is more open-ended than their predecessors, from the graceful, fluid brushwork to the ambiguous space and elusive meaning. In this conversation across the centuries, Sikander proves herself a thoughtful listener. She takes in elaborate tales of old and answers back in vague, enticing whispers.

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Shahzia Sikander: Flip Flop

Where: San Diego Museum of Art, 1450 El Prado, Balboa Park, San Diego

When: Tuesdays-Wednesdays, Fridays-Sundays, 10 a.m.-6 p.m.; Thursdays, 10 a.m.-9 p.m.

Ends: June 27

Price: $3-$8

Contact: (619) 232-7931