Extraordinary Realities IV

Enthroned and dressed in red, Sikander floats in a bubble above a painting she found in a market in Houston’s Little India neighborhood. Perhaps in a nod to her new Texas home, she seems to lasso some unseen desire lying outside her sphere.

This work is one from a series of six collages, each using as its base a traditional manuscript painting made for tourists. Sikander overlaid the paintings with photographs taken in an installation she had mounted at Project Row Houses, a community revitalization project and art space. The series was part of her continued experiment in disrupting traditional narratives.