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elsewhere, what we choose to build from the ground up.” This perspective informed the decision to make Art Jameel a contemporary arts centre rather than a museum, as well as the decision to try to disrupt the traditional binaries ofEast/West, national/transnational, modern and contemporary. She said: “Our philosophy isn’t necessarily about trying to propose an alternative art history, because that begs the question, ‘alternative to what?’, but to think from the ground up and opening historical connections across geographies.” Deciding what to inherit, not just from history but from different cultures and traditions, and deconstructing stereotypes are all central concerns of Ms Sikander’s work, which evocatively reinterprets the art of Indo-Persian miniature painting. A Pakistani artist who lives and works in New York, she trained in the school of miniature painting at the National College of Arts in Lahore before heading to the Rhode Island School of Design. “A lot of the things that I am interested in as a \[research-based\] artist are not necessarily held within the nation state. So how do you create work that constantly defies boundaries in terms of biographies and representing a specific culture?” said Ms Sikander, of her engagement with materials housed in the stores of western museums. “Whether one confronted being a female artist, a Muslim artist, an Asian artist or Asian- American or Pakistani?” 73