Nilima Sheikh: Fractured Skies

“The artist’s role is to bear witness—to both the past and the present,” says Nilima Sheikh. Over the course of her five-decade career, Sheikh has transformed narrative painting as a new way of engaging with history, highlighting lived experiences, illuminating regional stories, and foregrounding women’s voices. Her research-based art practice draws on a vast array of historical accounts, archival materials, and literary sources. Adapting the traditional scroll format and painting primarily in casein and gum temperas, Sheikh weaves together image, text, and stenciled patterning to create mult…