Zarina is a multi-faceted protagonist born from Sikander’s interest in female representations.
Detailed, abstract, confident, introspective, Zarina is intended as a complex and nuanced portrait. With the recent focus on the #MeToo movement and womens’ treatment globally, Sikander’s work also points to strong women voices taking a stance towards misrepresentations and silencing of women from history.

Deconstructing the stock character such as ‘beauty in window’ from within the art historical tradition of Indo-Persian miniature painting, Sikander’s reimagining of the passive and nameless feminine representation into an intellectual female inquiry is also a means to highlight female agency in visual and literary representation. In particular, Zarina is also a reference to the same named character in the Pulitzer-winning playwright Ayad Akhtar’s play “The Who and The What’.

Focusing on historical miniature painting in mid-eighties in Lahore at the National College of Arts during a time when traditional art was not popular as medium of expression for the youth, Sikander became a pioneer transforming the male dominated miniature painting history with a fresh feminist perspective and brought about an international interest in the tradition with her contemporary play on the form.