> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://serenademagazine.art/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # 'Nilima Sheikh: Fractured Skies' Opens at MoMA - URL: https://serenademagazine.art/nilima-sheikh-fractured-skies-opens-at-moma/ - Published: 2026-09-28T08:53:29.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-28T08:53:29.000Z - Description: The Museum of Modern Art and Kiran Nadar Museum of Art present 'Nilima Sheikh: Fractured Skies', the Indian artist’s first solo presentation in New York, bringing together two decades of paintings exploring history, memory and displacement. - Author: Serenade Team - Tags: News The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, presents *Nilima Sheikh: Fractured Skies*, the first solo presentation of the Indian artist’s work in New York. Organised in collaboration with the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA), New Delhi, the exhibition runs through 13 June 2027 and brings together works spanning the past two decades, including a new site-responsive body of paintings commissioned by KNMA and making its debut at MoMA. Based in Baroda, Nilima Sheikh (b. 1945, New Delhi) has developed a distinctive practice that draws together painting, literature, history and vernacular traditions. Her works frequently explore memory, displacement, violence and loss, with particular attention to the experiences of women and communities affected by political and social upheaval. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/04/9f/049f21fc-2d04-422c-9e33-73935ebdb811/content/images/2026/09/NILIMA_SHEIKH_MOMA_PRESS_008.jpeg) Portrait of Nilima Sheikh in the exhibition **Nilima Sheikh: Fractured Skies* on view at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, from September 27, 2026, through June 13, 2027\. Photo by Jonathan Dorado © The Museum of Modern Art, New York “The artist’s role is to bear witness, to both the past and the present,” Sheikh has said. This idea is central to *Fractured Skies*, which brings together major works from across her career, with a particular focus on *Each Night Put Kashmir in Your Dreams* (2003–14). The series comprises suspended, double-sided painted scrolls, each measuring 12 by six feet. Executed in casein tempera on unstretched canvas, a signature medium and format for Sheikh, the works combine imagery and text in a sequence of interconnected scenes. Drawing on her own experiences and research alongside historical accounts and literary sources, Sheikh explores the cultural richness and complex histories of the Kashmir Valley, a region shaped by longstanding political conflict and contested narratives of belonging. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/04/9f/049f21fc-2d04-422c-9e33-73935ebdb811/content/images/2026/09/Dying-Dreaming_recto.png) Nilima Sheikh. **Dying Dreaming* (recto). 2007/10\. Casein tempera on canvas. Lekha and Anupam Poddar Collection For Cara Manes, Associate Curator in MoMA’s Department of Painting and Sculpture, Sheikh’s ability to bring together different forms of knowledge is central to her significance as an artist. “Over the course of her distinguished career, Nilima Sheikh has developed a singular approach to art making, drawing on literary, historical, and vernacular traditions to create layered visual narratives that connect the past to the present,” Manes says. “Her paintings confront histories of violence, displacement, and erasure with deep sensitivity and formal invention. Centering lived experiences, particularly those of women, her works bear witness to the enduring power of human connections across time and space. Through her visionary practice, Sheikh has become a touchstone for artists following in the path she forged.” ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/04/9f/049f21fc-2d04-422c-9e33-73935ebdb811/content/images/2026/09/Home-Land-3.png) Nilima Sheikh. **Home, Land 3*. 2024\. Mixed tempera on Sanganer paper. Udit Bhambri The exhibition is co-organised by Manes and Roobina Karode, Artistic Director and Chief Curator of KNMA, with Elizabeth Wickham, Curatorial Assistant in MoMA’s Department of Painting and Sculpture, and Avijna Bhattacharya, Senior Curator at KNMA. Karode describes Sheikh’s practice as an important contribution to contemporary art from South Asia, particularly in the way it connects local histories with wider questions of conflict, displacement and human experience. “Nilima Sheikh’s practice occupies a significant place in the contemporary art world, offering a profound South Asian lens to the shared complexities and predicaments amidst geopolitical conflicts,” Karode says. “With a nuanced artistic sensibility, Sheikh works through an aesthetic of slowness, combining the tragic with the poetic, intricately weaving texts and images to meditate on states of longing and loss. By bridging local inheritance with urgent universal dialogues, this co-organized exhibition marks a defining moment in our ongoing mission to present South Asia’s visionary voices on the global stage.” ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/04/9f/049f21fc-2d04-422c-9e33-73935ebdb811/content/images/2026/09/Home-Land-4-1.png) Nilima Sheikh. **Home, Land 4*. 2025\. Mixed tempera on Sanganer paper. Ark Foundation for the Arts, Vadodara, India A central new work in the exhibition is *Shahid (Witness)* (2025–26), Sheikh’s latest reflection on the Kashmir Valley. Commissioned by KNMA, the work comprises 10 monumental suspended painted scrolls created specifically in response to the architecture of MoMA’s Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III Gallery. Alongside it, the exhibition includes a selection from *Home, Land* (2023–25), a series of tempera paintings on paper addressing the precarity and displacement experienced by the nomadic Bakarwal communities of Jammu and Kashmir. Positioned between the two suspended installations, these works form a connective passage through the exhibition, creating a visual and conceptual movement between earth and sky. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/04/9f/049f21fc-2d04-422c-9e33-73935ebdb811/content/images/2026/09/NILIMA_SHEIKH_MOMA_PRESS_004.jpg) Installation view of **Nilima Sheikh: Fractured Skies* on view at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, from September 27, 2026, through June 13, 2027\. Photo by Jonathan Dorado © The Museum of Modern Art, New York Born in New Delhi in 1945, Sheikh studied history at Delhi University between 1962 and 1965 before receiving a master’s degree in painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda in 1971\. The institution, established after Indian Independence, became an important centre for artistic and intellectual exchange and fostered a generation of artists who questioned inherited cultural and pedagogical frameworks. Sheikh was among those who helped shape the development of contemporary Indian art within this environment. Her solo exhibitions have included presentations at Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong; Gallery Espace at Bikaner House, New Delhi; Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai; the Art Institute of Chicago; and Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi. Her work has also featured in major international group exhibitions, including at the Barbican Centre, London; Sharjah Biennial 15; the Pera Museum, Istanbul; the Dhaka Art Summit; the Kochi-Muziris Biennale; documenta 14 in Athens and Kassel; and the Singapore Biennale. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/04/9f/049f21fc-2d04-422c-9e33-73935ebdb811/content/images/2026/09/NILIMA_SHEIKH_MOMA_PRESS_001.jpg) Installation view of **Nilima Sheikh: Fractured Skies* on view at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, from September 27, 2026, through June 13, 2027\. Photo by Jonathan Dorado © The Museum of Modern Art, New York Sheikh has received the Nandjunda Rao Award from Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath, Bangalore, and the Gagan Aban Puraskar Award from Visva Bharati University, Santiniketan. Her work is held in the permanent collections of institutions including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane; Leicester Museum and Art Gallery; Sharjah Art Museum; Guggenheim Museum, Abu Dhabi; and Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi. With *Fractured Skies*, MoMA and KNMA bring Sheikh’s sustained engagement with history, memory, place and human experience into a New York exhibition that spans works from the past two decades while introducing a major new commission to an international audience.