Detail: The first solo museum exhibition of the work of revered Indian-born artist Nilima Sheikh will feature nine banners painted by the artist for series focusing on both the magical history and contentious present of Kashmir. Completed between 2003 and 2010, these scroll-like works are presently scattered across India and Southeast Asia. They will be brought together in Chicago alongside two additional works that Sheikh will be creating especially for this Chicago installation. 

The exhibition’s title is derived from a line in the poem, “I See Kashmir from New Delhi at Midnight” by the Kashmiri American poet Agha Shahid Ali. Ali’s work initially inspired Sheikh’s interest in Kashmir, a region she has visited since childhood. Sheikh’s scrolls combine Ali’s poems with excerpts from myriad sources—from medieval poetry to Salman Rushdie’s books. Her image references are just as wide-ranging—miniatures, wall paintings, and magical Kashmiri folktales. 

The resultant multifaceted works, at once masterful and haunting, recall the complex culture of the Kashmir Valley, once described as paradise on earth; today the region is fissured by the Line of Control (LOC) between India and Pakistan. While the paintings focus on the cosmopolitanism of the ancient Silk Road that linked Kashmir to Central Asia and China, they are also imbued with a contemporary perspective which encourages viewers to reflect and think afresh about this contested territory. 

Nilima Sheikh (b. 1945, New Delhi) is one of India’s most renowned artists. She studied history at Delhi University and painting at the University of Baroda, Vadodara. Sheikh was the Roman J. Witt Resident Artist and Penny W. Stamp Lecturer at the University of Michigan in 2004; and artist in residence at the Montalvo Artists Studios, California, in 2005. She is married to the artist Gulammohammed Sheikh and lives in Vadodara and New Delhi, India. Her art practice of more than five decades includes works on paper, installations, large scrolls and screens, paintings, illustrations for children’s books, and theater set designs. 

Sheikh has exhibited widely both in India and internationally, includingInside Out: Women Artists of India, Middlesborough Art Gallery, United Kingdom (1995–96); Edge of Desire, Asia Society, New York, and Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, Australia (2004); Horn Please, Narratives in Contemporary Indian Art, Kunstmuseum, Berne, Switzerland (2007); India Moderna, Institut Valencia d’Art Modern, Valencia, Spain (2008); and Place-Time-Play: India–China Contemporary Art, West Heavens, Shanghai, China (2010).