Black Star
1975
archival giclee prints
12 inches x 20 inches
(b. 1975 — Pakistan) Building upon her interest in architecture, Seher Shah combines her own drafting skills with appropriated imagery of historical constructions. Her almost-psychedelic compositions are meditations on the history of Islamic cultures, the West’s encounters with the East, and the construction of cosmopolitan identities.
Below is an excerpt from a 2007 interview between Tom Finkelpearl, the director of Queens Museum of Art, with Seher Shah.
Tom Finkelpearl: “Who are you? By this I am asking how you self-identify. I know that for many people … this is a very complex question. For me, I know that it is a question that has a fairly fluid answer. In some contexts, I am a dad, in others, a white man. In some contexts, I am a museum director, in others, an American. But I am asking in one particular context—who are you when you are making art or representing yourself as an artist?”
Seher Shah: “That is a very difficult question to answer. I think that identity negotiation when I represent myself as an artist is made up of fragments and pieces from an array of sources. I think the visceral quality of the fragments is the most important to me though. In fact for this particular series of works, it was about deconstructing images, relationships, and forms of both personal and collective identity for myself, and reconstructing it in the works based on personal values and systems based on where I had lived and what I had experienced, as opposed to those that were given by a particular cultural or family parameter. But I do feel that it is from a viewpoint of an outsider looking in. That’s why I also feel that the works are all explorations, and it is as much about the process of working through the images and symbols and finding connections, as it is about the finished work.
In terms of who I am when creating works and representing myself as an artist, I work with all the fragments of the pieces that make up my identity. That may be a simplified answer, but it’s the only space I feel I can create for myself where I can define myself in a manner of my choice, and one that encapsulates how I want to explore the works. The idea that the fragments are not in opposition but make up a whole is the most important part of representing myself as an artist.”