To investigate the form and linguistic calibrations of other loved poetic traditions, and in my case of other visual resources, other loved art histories, has been the project.
—Nilima Sheikh, Artist Statement
The traditions of tempera painting I had learnt to love—Indian, Asian, and European, gave me clues to code my new concerns.
—Nilima Sheikh, A Note on Paintings III
How might the etymology of a word uncover various threads of an artist’s research, methods, and sensibilities? This exhibition uses “tempera” as a conceptual device to engage materials from the archive of artist Nilima Sheikh.
Based in Baroda, Sheikh has reflected on questions of tradition, historical lineage, and cosmopolitanism in Asia for over fifty years. Working across handmade paper, canvas panels, scrolls, and cloth, the artist’s exploration of tempera started during her student days, where she began to foster a personal language using the technologies and histories of painting. The medium of tempera has had a circuitous trajectory, with applications ranging from Greco-Roman frescoes, Byzantine sculpture, Italian Renaissance painting, manuscript illumination, and Bengal School painting (to name a few). A type of paint, medium, and method, tempera is prepared using powdered pigment, a binder, and water. These are processed through emulsification—where two insoluble liquids are mixed but not dissolved, and remain in a state of suspension. The exhibition references this state of suspension to understand Sheikh’s citational practice—where multiple forms, motifs, stories, figures, and lyrics are brought together, composed in layers, and reconfigured, without fusion or dissolution.
The exhibition is segmented based on terms that share etymologies with, or are related to, tempera—temperature: to consider the mix of climates and geographies the artist encountered through her travels; tempus: to think through the complex temporal registers of materials in the artist’s studio; and tempering: in Sheikh’s collaborations with theatre practitioners and illustrations for children’s books.
Nilima Sheikh is an artist based in Baroda, India. For the last five decades, Sheikh has worked on paper, installations, large scrolls and screens, painting, illustrations for children’s books, and theatre set designs. She began exhibiting her work in 1969 and has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including The Imaginary Institution of Indian Art, Barbican Centre, London (2024); Thinking Historically in the Present, Sharjah Biennial 15 (2023); Woman is as Woman does, CSMVS Museum, Mumbai (2022); Miniature 2.0, Pera Museum, Istanbul (2020); Dhaka Art Summit (2020); Kochi Muziris Biennale (2018); and documenta 14, Athens and Kassel (2017). Recent solo exhibitions include Terrain: Carrying Across, Leaving Behind, Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai (2017) and Gallery Espace, New Delhi (2018); and Each night put Kashmir in your dreams, Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai and Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi (2010). Sheikh’s work is held in public collections including The Art Institute of Chicago; The Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane; The New Walk Museum and Art Gallery, Leicester; Sharjah Art Museum; and Guggenheim Museum, Abu Dhabi.
Histories Loved and Tempered: The Nilima Sheikh Archive is curated by Samira Bose for Asia Art Archive in India with support from Pallavi Arora, Noopur Desai, Özge Ersoy, Arshad Hakim, and Sneha Ragavan.
We are grateful to Nilima Sheikh for her generosity and for entrusting us with presenting her archive.
We would also like to thank Paul C. Fermin, Malika Chetiyar, Andrea Chu, Nupur Dalmia, Rashmimala Devi, Diksha Gupta, Rachita Gupta, Jaren Ng, Rajesh Parmar, Dhaivat Shah, and Abha Sheth.
This iteration builds on Lines of Flight: Nilima Sheikh Archive, which exhibited at Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong, 2018. Curated by Sneha Ragavan and Özge Ersoy.
This exhibition is in collaboration with the Ark Foundation for the Arts.
Banner Image: Pigment test sheet from the studio of Nilima Sheikh. Courtesy of the artist.
