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.
Temperature shares its Latin root with tempera through “temperare” (to mix). For emulsification, tempera requires precise temperatures to achieve the correct consistency.
Within the artist’s personal archive, certain travels and experiences in the varied climates of Kashmir, China, and Rajasthan, are formative. A video composed of 8mm film recordings by the artist’s mother, Leila Dhanda, captures the artist’s childhood travels to Kashmir—showing hillscapes, streams, snow, and family moments—visuals that initially shaped her attunement to nature, and later a relationship with the fraught region.
Materials from two additional travels reflect a painter’s gaze and investigation painting in the region. The first set showcases diagrams, notes, letters, and photographs from her long-term engagement with the tradition of Pichhavai painting in Nathadwara, Rajasthan—which uses tempera—studied on a government scholarship in the 1980s as part of the ‘Living Traditions of India’ project initiated by the Faculty of Fine Arts at MS University of Baroda. These exemplify her interest not only in materials and compositions, but in the shaping of art forms by climates, geographies, and the communities that inhabit them.
Another set highlights her visits to China, initially on an invitation from the Ministry of China in 1990, where she engaged in intense dialogue on Chinese painting ranging from the ancient period to the fourteenth century, and on a subsequent visit to the Dunhuang Caves. In a report on her first trip, China Diary, she writes how the “frigid cold” was compensated for by the “warmth of her hosts”—the cultural exchange seen as essential as the viewing of art.
This section also hosts Travel Routes (2007), one of Sheikh’s works from the collection of Ark Foundation for the Arts, composed using the archival documents presented in the display. It shows stencilled ornamental architectural patterns, beings from myths across Asia, brushstrokes of mountains from the Dunhuang Caves, and the absorbent lightness of mixed tempera paint on vasli, a paper used in miniature painting since at least the sixteenth century.
The Latin term “tempus” denotes the flow, measurements, and perceptions of time. While tempus does not share its etymology with tempera, these words are connected through broader notions of moderation and balance in both mixing materials (tempera) and the passage of time (tempus).
Sheikh garnered an extensive repository of textual and visual sources of “other-loved histories” from her travels and reading, which she compiled through scans and photocopies. These included manuscript illumination, miniature painting, European painting, Himalayan sculpture, architectural elements, calendar art, and more. Selected imagery and motifs are traced in her studio, and have been hand-cut for the last three decades into stencils by Sanjhi artist Sanjay Soni of the family of Vishnu Prasad Jadia from Mathura. The practice of collecting and rendering is slow, precise, considered—the artist uses one corner from here, another from there.
The visual references are tacked on a pin board similar to those in Sheikh’s studio, to give an idea of their wide temporal arcs that cross borders and defy linear time. With an intervention in the style of Aby Warburg, the artist’s own logic of organisation following style and geography is reconfigured—mixed—speculating on motifs, gestures, and patterns. Apart from the original stencils, reproductions of the tracings are layered similar to the plastic folders they are stored in, showcasing the density of associations, allusions, and quotations, layering across both time and space.
“Tempering” as a verb refers to the mixing of varied ingredients and elements in deliberate proportions.
The exhibition itself spans two floors, with the second in the basement, hosting materials from the artist’s collaborations. From 1989 onwards, Sheikh was a set designer for a number of theatre productions and painted backdrops. As with her works, there is an eclectic tempering of citations. There is no single signatorial voice, with a number of artists working alongside each other, mixing their visual languages. The sets reference Parsi theatre curtains, Raja Ravi Varma paintings, tazia tomb carvings, signboards, and other contemporary idioms. A reproduction of a backdrop for Nayika Bhed from 1989 draws on a diagrammatic map of the Shrinathji Temple Complex of Nathadwara, and in a set of preparatory notes by Nilima Sheikh for Navlakkha in Japan in 2000, the list of materials ranges from aluminium tubs, to red earth mugs, haldi, and calligraphy curtains.
Finally, a nook hosts Sheikh’s illustrations for children’s books, produced by socially engaged and feminist publications. These were sites for the artist to contend with illustration as form, and to further immerse in stories from the region. Preparatory paintings for the books have painted squares left empty, suspended, where lettered narrative is added later—text and image, layered as if in emulsification.
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.
