Tying in personal and cultural histories, Shahzia Sikander's vibrant practice will be given new context in an afternoon convening featuring scholarly, artistic, and curatorial perspectives on the work and its reception. New York-based curator and early supporter of Sikander’s practice, Eugenie Tsai, joins composer and Harvard professor Vijay Iyer, and Cleveland Museum of Art curator Sonya Rhie Mace for a series of interdisciplinary presentations. The presentations will be followed by a discussion with Shahzia Sikander moderated by Asian Art Museum curator Padma Maitland.

This program is presented in conjunction with Shahzia Sikander: Collective Behavior, a career-spanning exhibition co-organized by the Cincinnati Art Museum and Cleveland Museum of Art, with the Cantor serving as the final and only West Coast venue. 

We gratefully acknowledge support from The Distinguished Lecture in Asian Art Fund in Honor of the Lijin Collection.

Livestream:
Watch live on YouTube.
Backup stream available on Vimeo.

All public programs at the Cantor Arts Center are always free! Space for this program is limited; advance registration is recommended. Those who have registered will have priority for seating. RSVP here. This program will be followed by an evening artist talk by Shahzia Sikander for the 2025 Distinguished Lecture in Asian Art Fund in Honor of the Lijin Collection. Come join us for one or both sessions of this exciting program. Please RSVP separately for the lecture here.

Participant Bios:

Shahzia Sikander is widely celebrated for reframing South Asian visual histories through a contemporary feminist perspective. Sikander’s command of diverse media and traditions, from historical South Asian miniature paintings to digital animation, reveals a vibrant visual universe that reimagines the past for our present moment. Throughout her practice, she considers diasporic experiences, histories of colonialism, and Western relations with the global south and the wider Islamic world, often through the lens of gender and body politics. Sikander is a recipient of the MacArthur “genius award” and the Pollock Prize for Creativity, among others. The survey exhibition Shahzia Sikander: Collective Behavior, on view at the Cantor from September 17, 2025 through January 25, 2026, was originally presented by the Cleveland Museum of Art and Cincinnati Art Museum as a Collateral Event of the 60th International Art Exhibition—La Biennale di Venezia.

Eugenie Tsai is a curator and writer based in New York. From 2007 to 2023, she was the John and Barbara Vogelstein Senior Curator of Contemporary Art at the Brooklyn Museum. Exhibitions she organized include Oscar yi Hou: East of Sun, West of Moon (2022–23), Guadalupe Maravilla: Tierra Blanca Joven (2022), The Slipstream: Reflection, Resilience, and Resistance in the Art of Our Time (2021–22), and KAWS: WHAT PARTY (2021). She also curated Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic (2015), co-curated Crossing Brooklyn: Art from Bushwick, Bed Stuy, and Beyond (2014), and LaToya Ruby Frazier: A Haunted Capital (2013). Prior to joining the Brooklyn Museum, she organized Robert Smithson (2004), which appeared at LA MOCA, the Dallas Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, and Robert Smithson Unearthed (1999) at the Wallach Art Center, Columbia University. Tsai worked at MoMA PS1 as Director of Curatorial Affairs (2006–07) and at the Whitney Museum of American Art (1994–2000) in various curatorial positions. 

Sonya Rhie Mace is the George P. Bickford Curator of Indian and Southeast Asian Art at the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA), where she has organized exhibitions on aspects of Indian painting, tantra in Buddhist art, and Cambodian sculpture. Prior to joining the CMA, she was the Curator of Asian Art at the San Diego Museum of Art from 2004 to 2012. She has served as author and editor of book-length publications that accompanied her major exhibitions, including Rhythms of India: The Art of Nandalal Bose (2008), Mughal Paintings: Art and Stories (2016), and Revealing Krishna (2021). She completed her B.A. at Smith College (1993) and her Ph.D. in the art of South Asia at Harvard University (1999). Alongside her work as a curator, she has taught courses in the history of South Asian art at the University of California, Irvine, Los Angeles, and San Diego, and at Case Western Reserve University. 

Vijay Iyer has carved out a unique path as an influential, prolific, shape-shifting presence in twenty-first-century music. A composer and pianist active and revered across multiple musical communities, Iyer has created a consistently innovative, emotionally resonant body of work over the last three decades, earning him a place as one of the leading music-makers of his generation. His honors include a MacArthur Fellowship, a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, a United States Artist Fellowship, three Grammy nominations, and the Alpert Award in the Arts. His newest albums are Thereupon (Pi Recordings, 2025); Compassion (ECM, 2024); Trouble (BMOP/sound, 2024); and Love in Exile (Verve, 2023). New York Times observed, “Iyer’s music has always been both intelligent and unpretentious, complex without being opaque; [he] ponders a phrase with obsessive rumination, unveiling layers of shifting, subtle emotion, before letting it fly with joyous abandon.” He is a professor at Harvard University.

Padma Maitland is the Malavalli Family Foundation Associate Curator of the Art of the Indian Subcontinent at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco and Visiting Fellow at Stanford’s Center for South Asia. He was previously an assistant professor of architectural history, theory, and criticism at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, prior to which he served in curatorial positions at Stanford’s Cantor Arts Center and the Minneapolis Institute of Art. He recently co-curated the exhibition After Hope: Videos of Resistance and edited the volume Art, Hope, Action: Creative Praxis in Pandemic Times.

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Accessibility Information or Requests

Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University is committed to ensuring our programs are accessible to everyone. To request access information and/or accommodations for this event, please complete this form at least one week prior to the event: museum.stanford.edu/access.

For questions, please contact disability.access@stanford.edu or Kwang-Mi Ro, kwangmi8@stanford.edu, (650) 723-3469.

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