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| "Venus' Wonderland," 1995-97. Vegetable color, dry pigment, watercolor, tea on hand-prepared 'wasli' paper. Collection of Rachel and Jean-Pierre Lehman, New York. |
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“Venus's Wonderland”
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| Almost all the figures
in "Venus's Wonderland" are veiled: the
woman who is in the center of the miniature painting, the smaller
female figures who populate its borders, and the monkey hanging
from a tree. Arranged off-center with a large
decorated border and depicting a scene reminiscent of a children's
morality tale - there is an apple tree and the fruit is found in
the hands of both the monkey and central female figure - the painting
began with Sikander thinking of a story about a monkey and a crocodile
and their mutual deception of each other. The colored hoops with
which the animals play, flat circles that border the scene, and
gossamer-like veils that resemble a shower of white ribbon, all
found here, are common elements in Sikander's work, personal symbols
that layer her paintings. Juxtaposed against the Eastern elements
of the scene is the appearance of Venus (hence the title of the
work), unveiled, painted in very lightly amid the animals, and the
shell from which she traditionally emerges, though which here she
is dislocated from. Instead, a
crocodile lies in the shell, glancing mischievously at the viewer.
The mesh of Eastern and Western mythology carries no negative overtones,
nor do those veiled in the scene seem any less free or revealing.
The monkey and crocodile in the children's tale that helped conceive
this painting, could be thought of as symbols for the larger mutual
(though here, playful) manipulation that Eastern and Western cultures
have engaged in, each positioning the other's cultural symbols as
abstract, unpromising, other. Here, that deceit is shown as playful
conceit. |
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