SAN ANTONIO, TX.- The Board of Trustees of the Linda Pace Foundation announces a new acquisition and the United States premiere of Parallax, a three-channel HD animation by international artist Shahzia Sikander. The public opening of Parallax will take place Saturday, October 4, 2014 from 6PM–9PM in SPACE, located in the northeast corner of CHRISpark in San Antonio, and will include a lecture by the artist.

Parallax is Sikander’s largest and most ambitious animation to date. Sikander’s first foray into animation occurred during her time as the 2001 Artpace International Artist in Residence. She made her first animation Intimacy (2001) by recording the multiple steps involved in the production of her eponymous painting. Since then, she has created several other animations, including Nemesis (2003), SpiNN (2003), Pursuit Curve (2004), Dissonance to Detour (2005), and The Last Post (2010). Drawing is at the heart of her practice, and her work in new media explores the implications of engaging drawing with technology.

Comprised of hundreds of tiny drawings that have been digitally animated, Parallax deals with the history of maritime trade and colonial occupation in the Strait of Hormuz. Topographical maps of the region provide a gouache landscape as well as layers comprised of spools of oil, fragmented bodies, and masses of Sikander’s signature Gopi hair motif. The animation ends with six “Singing Spheres” which pulsate as they gain and lose volume in accordance with the sonic rhythm of recited poetry.

The music score of Parallax is composed by Du Yun and includes poetry commissioned specifically for the score in collaboration with the Sharjah Art Foundation. Parallax has been exhibited at the Sharjah Biennial 2013; Auckland Triennial, 2013; Dhaka Art Summit, 2014; Bildmuseet, Umea, 2014; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen, 2014; and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea, 2014. It will be on view at the Guggenheim, Bilbao in 2015.

Parallax marks the second public exhibition at SPACE, an institution maintained by the Linda Pace Foundation. SPACE is an intimate exhibition space designed to publicly display the collection of late philanthropist and artist Linda Pace. The collection focuses on artists linked with the Artpace residency program and its related Hudson Show Room exhibitions, as well as other internationally recognized artists. The inaugural exhibition, Pace Gems, highlighted pieces from The Foundation’s collection. The new film installation by Sikander will occupy the entirety of the exhibition space.

Shahzia Sikander received her BFA in 1991 from the National College of Arts, Lahore, Pakistan and her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1995. Pakistani-born and internationally recognized, Sikander's pioneering practice takes Indo-Persian miniature painting as a point of departure. She challenges the strict formal tropes of miniature painting as well as its medium-based restrictions by experimenting with scale and media. Such media include animation, video, mural, and collaboration with other artists. Her process-based work is concerned with examining the forces at stake in contested cultural and political histories. Her work helped launch a major resurgence in the Miniature Painting department in the Nineties at the National College of Arts in Lahore, inspiring many others to examine the miniature tradition. Sikander is the recipient of numerous awards, including the inaugural medal of art awarded by Secretary of State Hilary Rodham Clinton (2012), the MacArthur Genius Award (2006-2011), and the Haji Sherif Award in Excellence in Miniature Painting at the NCA (1992).