Nilima Sheikh at MoMA: What happens when home itself is under threat?
Artist Nilima Sheikh, 80, reflects on her over five-decade career and her longstanding engagement with Kashmir, displacement and conflict, which began with her 2003 exhibition inspired by poet Agha Shahid Ali. Her current solo show, Fractured Skies at MoMA, brings together works spanning Kashmir’s cultural and political history, the lives of nomadic Bakarwal communities and, more recently, climate change. Inspired by floods, environmental literature and traditional Persian and Chinese visual traditions, Sheikh uses the mythical Simurgh and the sky as motifs of destruction, witness and hope. She credits her upbringing, education at Delhi’s Modern School and MSU Baroda, and collaborations with artisans and poets for shaping her practice, which blends miniature painting, handmade paper, traditional techniques and contemporary themes. For Sheikh, Kashmir is deeply personal, having travelled through the region extensively since childhood, and the anxiety of losing a place she considers home continues to inform her art.
“A work of art is like music… people who really understand classical music can get something more but it doesn’t mean that the ones who don’t know so much cannot appreciate it,” she says, sitting in her Delhi home, hours before boarding a flight to N... [5290 chars]
Published by: The Indian Express
Read full article here: https://indianexpress.com/article/express-sunday-eye/nilima-sheikh-moma-what-happens-home-itself-threat-10904320/
