Raqib Shaw: Ballads of East and West

Raqib Shaw: Ballads of East and West at the Gardner Museum, co-curated with Dr. Zehra Jumabhoy, is an invitation to see the world as Raqib Shaw sees it: “An amalgamation, a hybrid, a cocktail. ... The more you look, the more it will reward you.”

​​Raqib Shaw is an internationally renowned painter, whose work echoes across centuries and continents articulating a dialogue between East and West. Based in London, the artist lived most of his childhood in the Indian city of Srinagar, a ‘Heaven on Earth’ encircled by Himalayan mountains, lakes, and magical gardens. The Kashmir he knew as a child no longer exists, marred by political insurgencies. For Shaw, Kashmir represents a trampled Eden—a paradise lost—and references to the beauty and trauma of his childhood abound in his work.

Shaw’s paintings are flamboyant, fantastical, and extremely labor-intensive. They are puzzles that always include certain key ingredients: self-portraiture, landscapes in peril, references to historic painting, or moments from his own life. Shaw frequently depicts himself as satyr, a joker, a saint, a philosopher, or a blue-skinned divinity clad in sumptuous robes. The sensuous, glossy intensity of the jewel-like painting surface is rendered in infinite colors and shades with a painstaking technique—enamel paint, applied with porcupine quills to birch wood panels.

The exhibition, organized by the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and the Frist Museum in Nashville, Tennessee, first opened at the Frist Museum on September 14, 2023 and will be on view at the Gardner Museum from February 15 through May 12, 2024. From Boston, Raqib Shaw: Ballads of East and West will head to two additional museums: The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas from June 9 through September 2, 2024 and then the Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, California from November 15, 2024 through March 20, 2025.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website