Inspiring artists

During my time as a Fine Art student at George Mason University, I had a chance to research on various diverse artists. My culture's artifacts are based on Hindu, Kashmiri and Persian art and artifacts. I was influenced by Shazia Sikander, who is a Pakistani American contemporary artist. Shazia makes inspiring Persian and Indian miniature paintings. She says her art is a form of transformation. Transformation of symbols and mediums. She says that styles become the language in her paintings. She displays abstract and geometric patterns. Animation, Photography, murals and installations are some of the mediums through which she displays her artworks.

In one of her artworks titled "Fleshy Weapons" she incorporates mystic spiritual Hindu traditions with her view of spirituality, destruction and gender. I believe my works also target spirituality and destruction

Competitive nature of human specie could be eliminated if people were spiritual rather than materialistic. The monster is sent to destroy the people of Himalayas.

I am attaching a link below which will provide you an access to her artworks:

https://art21.org/watch/extended-play/shahzia-sikander-the-last-post-short/

There are few artists that have influenced me in one way or the other. One such artist is Ai Weiwei. He is a contemporary artist. His installations are inspirational. The technique which he uses in his works has motivated me. One of his works sunflower seeds made me think about the texture of the monster that I have been working on. If you look at the monster sketch and some of the tribal people I made, you will find that my texture work details are inspired by Aiweiwei's artwork.

Wangechi Mutu

Although Wangechi Mutu creates artworks related to feminism but self and cultural identity plays an important role in her artworks as well. Sometimes she would create artwork targeting African culture in American society and sometimes about female sexual oppression. She’s changing the perception and mentality of people of the world. In modern times, she creates these interesting artworks that give the notion of human societal issues. I believe that the artist I researched and my personal work both target the issues of human society. I started my topic keeping culture and competition in mind and I discovered that culture as well as competitive nature of human species are interlinked. Sometime competitiveness is about socioeconomic status but most of the times it is about cultural identities. If we navigate the history of our country, we will find out how we were different from the British. Even though our founding fathers were the 1st or 2nd British and European generation but our mentality revolutionized in that span of time and they had a clash with the colonist having American identity. My artwork deals with society and culture in a broad discussion and the nature of human competition in detail. I am attaching one of her works Untitled- 2003.

Untitled 2003- Wangechi Mutu

Emily Jasir

My first thought of coming up with the world of my societal problem was definitely territorial and cultural issues and also competitive nature of humans. Emily Jasir depicts all these problems in her artwork. What defines culture and identity is different for every individual. Emily depicts the problem of disputed territory of Palestine. My culture also depicts two different strong nations on competing with a relatively weak nation for natural resources.