Raqib Shaw: Ballads of East and West

Fantastical paintings encompassing an eclectic fusion of the natural world, global artistic influences, and memory are at the core of Raqib Shaw: Ballads of East and West, on view at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum through May 12, 2024. The exhibition unfolds across the entire Museum, predominantly in the Hostetter Gallery, and brings together more than twenty works from private and public collections around the world, as well as a new work commissioned for the Museum’s façade. The small Fenway Gallery in the historic building evokes the artist’s studio and includes objects of inspiration, staged performances captured in photographs and drawings, and preparatory studies for one painting that marks the loss of Shaw’s beloved Jack Russell Terrier, Mr. C. A catalog was produced in conjunction with the exhibition. 

Raqib Shaw was born in Calcutta (now Kolkata), India, in 1974, and grew up in the valley of Kashmir, surrounded by gardens, lakes, and the Himalayan mountains—a place that he remembers as paradise on earth before religious tensions and violent insurgencies took hold. His landscapes in peril often symbolize Kashmir as a trampled paradise, but also include a window for hope. Shaw’s paintings are deeply self-reflective, filled with associations to the beauty and trauma of his childhood. In them he assumes the guise of a joker, a saint, a satyr, a philosopher, and a blue-skinned Hindu deity while drawing on compositions from iconic European paintings fused with motifs from Asian culture.

Raqib Shaw: Ballads of East and West was co-organized by the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and the Frist Art Museum in Nashville, Tennessee, and co-curated with Dr. Zehra Jumabhoy. The Gardner Museum is the second stop for the exhibition, following the Frist Art Museum. The exhibition will travel from Boston to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston in Texas (June 9–September 2, 2024) and The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California (November 16, 2024–March 3, 2025).

Support for the exhibition at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is provided by the Ford Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Steve and Alexandra Cohen, Pace Gallery, and White Cube. 

The Artist-in-Residence program is directed by Pieranna Cavalchini, Tom and Lisa Blumenthal Curator of Contemporary Art, and is supported by the Barbara Lee Program Fund. Funding is also provided for site-specific installations of new work on the Anne H. Fitzpatrick Façade on Evans Way.

The Gardner Museum receives operating support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

Learn more about the exhibition and related programs.

For press inquiries, please email Dawn Griffin: dgriffin@isgm.org.

Other inquiries: information@isgm.org