Raqib Shaw in Conversation with Pieranna Cavalchini

Thursday, February 15, 2024
7 pm
Calderwood Hall

Join artist Raqib Shaw in conversation with exhibition co-curator Pieranna Cavalchini on the public opening evening of the Gardner’s exhibition Raqib Shaw: Ballads of East and West. Born in Calcutta, India, raised in Kashmir, and now based in London, Shaw paints colorful, jewel-like works infused with mystery and memory.

This conversation will trace Shaw’s artistic journey and how he mines history, art history, and mystical sources to imagine alternate realities. Discover how Shaw sources childhood memories, contemporary issues, and current global crises, particularly in the contested territory of Kashmir, to create fantastical scenes set within hybridized geographies.

This program is organized in connection with Raqib Shaw: Ballads of East and West (February 15 - May 12, 2024). Exhibition galleries will be open before and after the program.

Image Credit: Raqib Shaw, Ode to the Country without a Post Office, 2019-20. Acrylic liner and enamel on Birch wood, 80 x 85 cm (31 4/8 x 33 4/8 in.) © Raqib Shaw. Private Collection. Photo © (White Cube) Theo Christelis.

Tickets

Advanced tickets are required and include Museum admission. Adults $20, seniors $18, students $13, free for members and children 17 and under.

Seating in Calderwood Hall is first come, first served. Seating begins 45 minutes before the event. Late seating is not guaranteed.

To request accessible or wheelchair seating please call the box office at 617 278 5156.

About the Speakers

Raqib Shaw’s (b. 1974, India) works reveal an eclectic fusion of influences—from Persian carpets to Renaissance painting to Japanese lacquerware—and are often developed from literary, art historical, and mystical sources. Shaw has devised a unique method of painting; manipulating enamel and industrial metallic paints with a porcupine quill to fashion the sharp details and rich surface textures of rocks, coral, foliage, feathers and flowers. Shaw has had solo exhibitions at Tate Britain, London (2006); The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2008); Manchester Art Gallery (2013); Galerie Rudolfinum, Prague (2013), and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh (2018). His exhibition at The Whitworth Art Gallery, The University of Manchester, UK (2017) was reimagined for the Dhaka Art Summit, Bangladesh, the following year. Organized by The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston and Frist Art Museum, Nashville, Ballads of East and West, Shaw's survey exhibition, will travel on to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, San Marino in 2024. Shaw spent his formative years in Calcutta and Kashmir before moving to London in 1997 where he currently lives and works.

Raqib Shaw - photo by Tom Thistlethwaite, 2023

Pieranna Cavalchini is the Tom and Lisa Blumenthal Curator of Contemporary Art at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and co-curator of Raqib Shaw: Ballads of East and West.

Raqib Shaw: Ballads of East and West is organized by the Frist Art Museum, Nashville, and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, with guest curator Dr. Zehra Jumabhoy.

Additional Venues: The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston: June 9 – September 2, 2024 and The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens: 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.