Nilima Sheikh b. 1945
"I think beauty can be a vehicle for the most violent of sentiments or attitudes, it should be allowed to contain other things, [...]”
– Nilima Sheikh
Artist Biography
Nilima Sheikh (b. 1945, New Delhi, India, based in Baroda, India) works in painting to create story-rich compositions engaging with ideas of home, identity, belonging, exile and womanhood. Drawing on stylistic traditions from Persian and North Indian miniature painting as well as East Asian scroll painting, her complex narratives unfold as an interplay between ancient mythology and modern history, the mundane and the mystical.
With a lifelong love for reading that was enriched by her formal training in painting, Sheikh began combining the visual elements of murals with the textual character of manuscripts in her work. While aligned with a generation of artists inspired by Indian craft traditions, she distinguishes herself through her use of traditional materials such as tempera and wasli paper to depict contemporary perspectives. In Each Night Put Kashmir in Your Dreams (2003–2010), a series of nine double-sided scrolls, Sheikh portrays the political violence endured by the inhabitants of Kashmir Valley—historically regarded as a paradise on earth—amid the surge of nationalism in post-Independence India.
Sheikh obtained her BA in History from Delhi University, New Delhi in 1965 and her BFA in Painting from the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda in 1971. Her work is held in major collections including the Art Institute of Chicago; Fukuoka Asian Art Museum; Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts, Amman; National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Tate, London; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Notable exhibitions include Lines Of Flight (2018), Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong; Connecting Threads (2018), Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai; Each night put Kashmir in your dreams (2014), The Art Institute of Chicago; Landscape of Thinking Slow (2013), National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul; Horn Please (2007), Kunstmuseum, Berne. The artist has also participated in major international festivals including Seismic Movements (2020), 5th Dhaka Art Summit; Possibilities for a Non-Alienated Life (2018), 4th Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Kochi; Learning from Athens (2017), 14th Documenta, Kassel; An Atlas of Mirrors (2016), 5th Singapore Biennale; APT2 (1996), 2nd Asia Pacific Triennial, Brisbane; Africus (1995), 1st Johannesburg Biennale; and 3rd Asian Art Biennale Bangladesh (1986), Dhaka.
Sheikh had her residency at the STPI Workshop in 2005, resulting in the Asia Society Portfolio (2006)—a set of ten prints by leading Asian artists to mark both a decade of the Asian Society’s exhibition and artist commission programme, and the fiftieth anniversary of the Society’s founding.