RISD Limited Editions Returns with a Second Sale to Benefit RISD Students

Huma Bhabha 85 PR and Shahzia Sikander MFA 95 PT/PR are the latest alumni to donate exclusive limited-run prints of their work in support of the Student Opportunity Fund

PROVIDENCE, RI – November 21, 2022 – Rhode Island School of Design’s (RISD) second RISD Limited Editions sale is an exciting continuation of the alumni-led initiative developed in the college’s tradition of supporting young artists and designers. This year’s sale goes live to the public on November 28, 2022 and features works by internationally acclaimed Pakistani American artists Huma Bhabha (BFA 1985, Printmaking) and Shahzia Sikander (MFA 1995, Painting & Printmaking). RISD Limited Editions has collaborated this year with master printmakers at New York City’s Pace Prints, who have worked with both artists to develop the limited-run, signed and numbered prints.

Sikander, a member of RISD’s Board of Trustees, understands the financial challenges students can face while pursuing their dreams. “RISD students are pioneers, always reinventing and reinterpreting the boundaries of traditional artmaking,” she says. “Participating in the limited-edition sale is my way to help ensure that their artistic voices are heard, regardless of their financial status.”

The RISD Limited Editions inaugural sale held in October 2021 raised more than $50,000 for the Student Opportunity Fund. This fund provides necessary financial assistance for educational expenses not covered by traditional financial aid. Examples include course and making materials, internships, global travel courses and research opportunities, making the full RISD experience accessible to students from all income levels. 

RISD Limited Editions will be available to the public on November 28, 2022. More information can be found at alumni.risd.edu/limited-editions. 

About the Artists

Huma Bhabha 85 Printmaking
Huma Bhabha was born in Karachi, Pakistan, in 1962 and moved to the US in 1981 to attend RISD, where she earned her BFA in 1985. She later studied at the School of the Arts at Columbia University, New York, where she received her MFA in 1989. She currently lives and works in Poughkeepsie, NY. A solo presentation of Bhabha’s work is currently on view at Fundación Casa Wabi, Puerto Escondido, Mexico, through January 2023. In 2020, the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, England, presented Huma Bhabha: Against Time. The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston organized Huma Bhabha: They Live, on view in 2019, and published an accompanying catalogue. An installation of the artist’s work, Huma Bhabha: We Come in Peace, was commissioned by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 2018 for their roof garden. Previous solo exhibitions have taken place at prominent institutions such as The Contemporary Austin, TX (2018); MoMA PS1, Long Island City, NY (2012); Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia, Italy (2012); Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, CO (2011); and The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT (2008), among others. Bhabha’s work has also been included in numerous group exhibitions internationally, and she has been the recipient of notable awards, such as The American Academy in Berlin’s Berlin Prize, the Guna S. Mundheim Fellowship (2013) and the Emerging Artist Award from The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT (2008). Work by the artist is held in collections worldwide.

Shahzia Sikander MFA 95 Painting/Printmaking
Pioneering Pakistani American artist Shahzia Sikander is widely celebrated for expanding and subverting pre-modern and classical Central and South-Asian miniature painting traditions and launching the form known today as neo-miniature. By bringing the non-western art-historical visual vernacular into dialogue with contemporary international art practices, Sikander’s multivalent work examines colonial archives to readdress orientalist narratives in western art history. Interrogating ideas of language, trade, empire and migration through imperial and feminist perspectives, Sikander’s paintings, video animations, mosaics and sculpture explore gender roles and sexuality, cultural identity, racial narratives and colonial and postcolonial histories. Her innovative work led to US survey exhibitions at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, the Hirshhorn Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art and, most recently, the RISD Museum. She has also presented her work in solo exhibitions around the world, including MAXXI Museo Rome, the Asia Society Hong Kong, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and the Irish Museum of Modern Art. Sikander’s work can be found in the permanent collections of many prestigious institutions, and she has won numerous awards, grants and fellowships, including a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship and the National Medal of Arts. She is a member of RISD’s Board of Trustees and lives and works in New York City.

About Rhode Island School of Design
RISD (pronounced “RIZ-dee”) is a creative community founded in 1877 in Providence, Rhode Island. Today, we enroll 2,620 students hailing from 59 countries. Led by a committed faculty, they are engaged in 44 full-time bachelor's and master's degree programs and supported by a worldwide network of over 31,000 alumni who demonstrate the vital role artists and designers play in today’s society.

Beyond facts and figures, what is the spirit of this community? Through a cross-disciplinary curriculum of studio-based learning and rigorous study in the liberal arts, RISD students are encouraged to develop their own personal creative processes, but they are united by one guiding principle: in order to create, one must question. In cultivating expansive and elastic thinking, RISD seeks to activate a critical exchange that empowers artists, designers and scholars to generate and challenge the ideas that shape our world. RISD’s mission, at both the college and museum, is not only to educate students and the public in the creation and appreciation of works of art and design, but to transmit that knowledge and make global contributions.

Contact:
Jaime Marland
Senior Director, Public Relations / RISD
jmarland@risd.edu
401 427-6954