Metaphor, Memory, and Socio-Political Discourse in the Paintings of Nilima Sheikh

Abstract: This paper examines how Nilima Sheikh employs visual metaphors to construct layered narratives that engage deeply with memory, tradition, gendered experience, displacement, and socio-political critique. Drawing upon traditional South Asian art forms, literary references, and personal histories, Sheikh’s metaphoric strategies generate a poetic visual language that negotiates between the personal and the political. Through a critical analysis of selected bodies of work — particularly Each Night Put Kashmir in Your Dreams — this study situates her practice at the intersection of narrative painting, cultural memory, and political commentary. Supported by artist interviews, archival material, and exhibition literature, the paper argues that Sheikh’s metaphoric structures operate not simply as aesthetic devices, but as epistemological tools that reveal hidden histories, fractured geographies, and gendered modes of witnessing within contemporary Indian art. Keywords: Nilima Sheikh, visual metaphor, memory, contemporary Indian art, narrative painting, Kashmir, displacement, feminist aesthetics, tradition and modernity, socio-political art, intertextuality