Artist Nilima Sheikh studied history because her parents wanted her to pursue something that would help her earn a living. “After all, art was not that viable an option at the time,” smiles the septuagenarian painter. That study, however, did not go waste. Rather, it helped her. “History helps me in my art. The Faculty of Fine Arts in MS University of Baroda, where I studied, has a very strong inclination towards the subject. And that art history has been the basis of a lot of my works,” she says.
No wonder, Sheikh is known for integrating text in her art. “Why shouldn’t we have words and images together? Several continuing traditions of making art which come from historical times combine paintings and scripts—for example, manuscript paintings from across the world. And they don’t seem to do each other any harm. That was a lesson I picked up.”
Sheikh, who has a mural at the Mumbai International Airport, started using text as early as 1984. But at that time, she didn’t paint it on top of the canvas; rather wrote it alongside. “Later I wanted the reading aspect to be there in the painting. So, began my style incorporating text into images,” she says. Displacement is the primary theme of her artworks, and one finds lines talking about the same incorporated into her paintings. From Gujarati and Punjabi literature, to a quote from Rohith Vemula, to a few lines from American poet Emily Dickinson. There are also lines from the Bouda Tribe of Ethopia, alongside those of Indo-American poet of Kashmiri origin—Aga Shahid Ali—and Persian poet Muhammad Tahir Ghani, who was born in Kashmir.
While some call Sheikh a ‘chronicler of history’, others say she is an ‘artist storyteller’.
“People say that I work with ‘traditions’ of the past, but I prefer to use the word ‘history’. And, I do like to tell stories, not necessarily all the time. Story-telling is very much a part of our art history.”
At a time when a very few women artists were given a platform, Sheikh showcased her work with three others—Nalini Malani, Arpita Singh, and Madhvi Parekh—giving art lovers the now-legendary Four Women Artists exhibition. “We were actually thinking of a larger show. Nalini was the one who was planning it. But there were issues and it became complicated and cumbersome. So Arpita suggested that the four of us should go ahead and hold the exhibition. And, it suddenly became a very doable project.”
While that experience was a rebellious move, she looks back fondly on her first solo. “I was still a student when Roshen Alkazi, who was closely associated with the contemporary art movement in Mumbai, invited me to a show. I think of her with a great deal of regard for what she did for my professional entry into the art world. She encouraged me throughout. She always pulled me up.”
Having spent her young years in Kashmir where she “would visit often”, Sheikh says it inspired her art. It is her muse. She believes that various facets of the Kashmiri landscape have seeped into her work. “I believe many Indian have a fascination for Kashmir.”
The artist, who counts K G Subramanyan, Bhupen Khakhar, and early Italian Renaissance painter Fra Angelico among her inspirations, believes that the younger generation today has got immense energy and are doing wonderful work. “New boundaries are being broken all the time. It is very heartening to see that. And this is also being understood internationally more than it was earlier. The art is reaching out to the wider world in a way that is quite exciting,” she says.The acclaimed artist, who grew up in a doctor’s family where “dinner table conversations were very often not palatable”, married another artist, Padma Bhushan Gulam Mohammed Sheikh. “I hope we didn’t drown our children with art,” she laughs.