A talk with Nilima Sheikh

Closing event of the exhibition ‘Kasauli Art Centre 1976–1991’

Sunday, 3 December 2023, 4 pm
Auditorium, Government Museum & Art Gallery, Chandigarh

 

Nilima Sheikh (b. 1945) is one of the most significant contemporary artists in India today. She trained as a painter at the MS University, Baroda, and her practice of over five decades draws inspiration from historical art, craft traditions, literature and poetry. Her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions in India and across the world, including the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Asia Society NY, Art Institute of Chicago, documenta14 and Sharjah Biennial 15. She has designed sets for theatre productions, illustrated children’s books and published essays on art since the 1970s.

 

Nilima Sheikh was an integral part of the visual art and theatre workshops at the Kasauli Art Centre, that was founded by artist Vivan Sundaram in 1976 at his family home ‘Ivy Lodge’ in the Kasauli Hills. From 1976 until 1991, the Kasauli Art Centre held artists’ workshops, seminars and symposia on film and critical theory, and experiments in theatre-making; all underlining Vivan’s belief in interdisciplinary exchange and art-making as a practice of collectivity and dialogue. Artists, academics and cultural practitioners lived and worked on the premises of Ivy Lodge, in what was perhaps one of the first experiments in artists’ residencies in the country.

 

This conversation is the closing event of
Kasauli Art Centre 1976-1991:
An exhibition of paintings, sculptures, prints, archival documents

at the Museum of Fine Arts, Panjab University, Sector 14, Chandigarh.

 

The exhibition was produced by the Sher-Gil Sundaram Arts Foundation in collaboration with the Department of Art History & Visual Arts, Panjab University.