Nilima Sheikh (b. 1945, Delhi)
Trained at Delhi University and the Faculty of Fine Arts, Vadodara Sheikh was most recently featured at Frieze Masters Studio Programme in London (2024), her solo exhibitions include ‘Terrain: Carrying Across Leaving Behind’, Mumbai (2017) and New Delhi (2018); ’Each Night put Kashmir in your Dreams’, The Art Institute of Chicago (2014). Recent group participations include ’The Imaginary Institution of Indian Art’, London (2024); Sharjah Biennial 15 (2023); Dhaka Art Summit (2020); Kochi Muziris Biennale
(2018); Documenta 14, Athens and Kassel (2017). In 2023 she was Mittal Institute’s inaugural Distinguished Artist Fellow at Harvard University and the Asia Arts Game Changer Awardee. The artist lives in Vadodara.
She started exhibiting professionally in 1969, and since has explored the grammar of varied pictorial languages and tempera technologies. While exploring historical art forms through the lens of personal subjectivities, she uses a range of visual and literary sources in her work, including the Sanjhi stencils from Mathura.
The works explore deras, rudimentary but sturdy structures built of wood or stone, made by Gujjar and Bakkarwal herders, the pastoralists of the western Himalayas, when they take their animals up to the higher pasturelands of the mountains to graze every summer. They locate sites enroute to pitch their tents and light their hearths, which they return to yearly. Built to withstand snowstorms, the deras home the itinerant clan or fellow herders each year and function as communal shelters open to all.