The Mittal Institute’s inaugural Distinguished Artist Fellow, Nilima Sheikh, will be in residence at the Institute on the Harvard campus this April. Sheikh is one of South Asia’s most-renowned painters. Her work focuses on longing, loss, roots, displacement, violence, the perception of tradition and ideas of femininity. Her paintings using tempera on handmade paper or canvas as well as the formats and modes of installation she employs are influenced by East Asian, Persian, Central Asian, pre-Renaissance European and North Indian schools of tempera painting;. She devises her forms of telling by adapting traditional forms like manuscript paintings, scrolls, Pichhvais (ritual backdrops), folding or enclosing screens and altarpieces Her visual and textual layering, often marked by a subtle mix of lore and history, offer a depth of narration and glimpses of multiple worlds, and a commitment to feminist realities.
Click here for more information.