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In Madison Square Park, Shahzia Sikander watches as her bronze sculpture Witness (2023) is installed a short distance from its counterpart, Now (2023), Sikander’s sculpture that sits atop the Appellate Division, First Department, Supreme Court of the State of New York alongside statues of famous lawmakers like King Louis IV and Moses. The two figures are components of a public exhibition co-commissioned by the Madison Square Park Conservancy and Public Art of the University of Houston System, titled Havah…to breathe, air, life (2023), through which Sikander aims to reimagine the monument as a marker of boundary-breaking, feminine spirit, and collective visibility. Prior to this most recent project, the artist has spent nearly three decades developing traditional Indian and Persian art techniques into a visual language that addresses colonial histories and erasures.  “I like to think of my practice as an anti-monument,” says Sikander, “because it engages the past without glorifying it.” 

To create her monumental sculptures, the artist began thinking of the fluid and fantastical feminine forms that appear in her paintings, such as Pleasure Pillars (2001) and A Slight and Pleasing Dislocation (2001). Sikander’s new sculptures build on the powerful depictions of the feminine in her previous work while incorporating new elements specific to the particular site and context of the public works. Witness symbolically bursts through the stained glass ceiling of the courthouse, the glass mosaic detailing of her hoop skirt depicting the shattered glass, while the jabot worn prominently by both figures calls to Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s feminization of the traditional black robes worn by justices of the United States Supreme Court. Joining park visitors to view the statues as they lower into place, Sikander contemplates the works’ timely nature in light of recent legislative battles surrounding women’s reproductive rights in the United States, as well as the ongoing fight for equitable representation in society at large. “Whenever we create art and put something in the world, it pushes the envelope of who gets to be represented even further,” says Sikander. “These things are integral to how art can then negotiate a space for a future generation.”