Layering

        Shahzia Sikander was born in Lahore, the capital of Pakistan. She specializes in India and Persian miniature painting—and extremely tedious art form for which she studied under Bashir Ahmed.
            Having lived in America for over 20 years, Sikander is interested in blending eastern techniques with western ideas such as feminism. She also wishes to explore the intertwining nature of Hinduism and Islam, which she believed reflects the history between the neighboring countries of India and Pakistan. She often combines the religions traditions and experiments with the various similarities and differences between those two cultures.
            Sikander incorporates layering into her work in many ways – the first of which are still lives. Sikander works with tissue paper as they are more free flowing, they allow her to express various dimensions of the same issues. She believes the depth or space added by multiple layers adds a sense of a meaning being created or distorted, or that they show the true depth beyond a piece’s surface.  She also likes to manipulate the sense of depth of space and blur certain facets of a piece as a viewer moves through it.
            In animations, in pieces such as “The Last Post” and “Disruption as Rapture”, Sikander took to layering to expose viewpoints not explored by others before. Using layering, she utilizes many of the same characters or elements throughout, creating motifs of sorts. This allows her to show both their positive and negative sides, as well as their historical effects on specific people a whole. Sikander may also use the above mentioned motifs to represent specific things, for example, in “The Last Post”, the colonial man / soldier was used to symbolize the British East India Company, or England. She makes the colonial soldier the main character of the animation, and by doing so, effectively shows the actions and effects of Imperialistic England and the British East India Company.




            In addition to animation and still lives, Sikander also incorporates objects and transforms them into something else. For example, she has taken the hairstyles of the Gopi women (followers of Krishna – who is an incarnation of Vishnu), and rotated them so that they look like birds or butterflies of a sort.



Questions:


             I have learned that layering is a great way to convey deeper meanings. It can be used to juxtapose two completely different subjects or compare subjects whose similarities are seldom noticed.  It can be used to examine the true meaning of a topic or create something novel out of existing concepts. Layering is an interesting means of art in that it can truly be used to convey any meaning. Whatever the artwork, however, it almost always adds a depth and exposes new concepts.
             Contemporary artists use layering in their work for many purposes. It can be used to emulate whimsical concepts or cutting political statements. Some artists, for example, may use a scene of suffering as a background to their artwork. Other artists, like Shahzia Sikander, use it to combine different cultures and provide unique perspectives on such divides. Additionally, Layering, being such a versatile principle, can be used in all mediums of art – painting, animations, video games etc.
              As an amateur animator, I might be able to incorporate layering into to videos and images in various ways; as my major theme revolves around looking inward, layering gives me many opportunities to explore the multi-tiered personalities of humans. I might also be able to create interesting gradients in photoshop.
              I found that Sikander uses layering in 2D animation, which is an excellent facet to explore, especially when you can experiment with the transparency of the layers, which is also something that can be done in photoshop. Regardless, it would be very interesting to incorporate layering into animation and I’m curious to see how it would turn out.






Resources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyWn3a7flb4
http://www.artnews.com/2013/04/15/shahzia-sikander-maximalist-miniatures/
https://art21.org/watch/extended-play/shahzia-sikander-the-last-post-short/
https://www.artsy.net/artist/shahzia-sikander
https://brooklynrail.org/2016/11/art/shahzia-sikander-with-sara-christoph
https://d3rtf5gv0re40d.cloudfront.net/anzax/c8/c85e2a1c-d0ea-45c2-8eb9-f127e4ec55db_447_650.jpg
http://1vze7o2h8a2b2tyahl3i0t68.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/04153.jpg