Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

012. Housed

The movement of Sikander’s brush, fully loaded with white gouache, is palpable in this depiction, yet the figural or architectural form itself remains ambiguous. The top portion, a face covering for a shuttlecock burka, is most clearly articulated. The haunted image responds to the Orientalist obsession with the veil in the Western imagination: Is it perforated armor, a shelter, a mask, or a shell? According to Sikander, “Housed is about the constraints of escaping an imprisoning representation. The cage-like form has a door, and a pink heart lurks inside. This painting tapped into my anxiety of being boxed into a stereotype on behalf of a culture or a religion.”

Shahzia Sikander (born 1969)
Housed, 1995 Gouache and charcoal on clay-coated paperboard
Collection of the artist
© Shahzia Sikander. Courtesy: the artist, Sean Kelly, New York and Pilar Corrias, London.