Shahzia Sikander: The Last Post

Shahzia Sikander's The Last Post is a ten-minute HD digital animation that interrogates British colonialism's legacy in Asia through precisely inked, animated scenes. The work centers a faceless "Company man" in a red waistcoat—a symbol of imperial power—surrounded by dissolving Indian court architecture, Chinese cut-paper silhouettes, and watercolor maps of South Asia. Set to Pulitzer Prize–winning composer Du Yun's electronic score, the video traces the East India Company's expanding mercantile and military presence from the 1600s onward, viscerally conveying colonialism's reverberations across continents and time.