Born in Calcutta, India, and raised in Kashmir, Raqib Shaw comes from a family of merchants and his early experience of living among antiques, jewellery and exotic fabrics and carpets has informed his highly intricate and brightly coloured paintings. He creates opulent visions of unearthly realms populated by cavorting monkey kings, leather-strapped centaurs and fearsome tiger-headed and zebra-mounted warriors. The world he portrays is beautiful, terrifying, debauched, luxurious and steeped in mythology, with a thrilling synergy between the fantastical imagery and the delicacy of his technique.
Shaw's paintings on birch panels and paper, and his sculptures in bronze, often take inspiration from eastern and western mythology, as well as masterpieces from art history. Using these sources to construct a compositional or narrative framework, he adds elements from his distinctive visual lexicon, using a range of unusual media – including rhinestones, glitter and enamel. He paints figures, carpets, costumes and mythical landscapes with exquisite skill, using a painstaking method that recalls the cloisonné technique used since ancient times to decorate metalwork and ceramics.
Shaw himself often features in his paintings but is typically distinct from the surrounding action. He is usually depicted sitting on the floor or a bed, gazing into pools of water, mirrors or at maps, like a poet meditating on the sickness of the world or an artist struck by the potency of the visions in his mind. In one example, Self-portrait in the Study at Peckham (A Reverie after Antonello da Messina’s Saint Jerome) (2014), he reinterprets a work by the fifteenth-century artist as a crazed fantasy replete with demonic skeletons, ghouls, technicolour reptilian monkeys, a glistening full moon and a central figure – a blue-faced portrayal of Shaw in a floral robe – with his head thrown back, apparently cackling. One of the fascinations of his work is whether his seductive, mystical worlds are to be basked in or rejected.
Shaw lives and works in his Peckham studio in south London, a city he first visited in 1992 and where he enrolled at Central St Martins in 1998, completing his MA in 2002. His work has been the subject of important solo exhibitions since shortly after his graduation, including the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh (2018); Whitworth, Manchester (2017); Rudolfinum, Prague (2013); Manchester Art Gallery (2013); The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2008); Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami (2006); and Tate Britain, London (2006).
2024
Raqib Shaw: Ballads of East and West, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, MA, USA
2023
Raqib Shaw: Ballads of East and West, Frist Museum, Nashville, USA
2022
Raqib Shaw: Tales from an Urban Garden, The Little House, Dries van Noten, Los Angeles, CA, USA
2021
Raqib Shaw: Reflections Upon the Looking-Glass River, Pace, Geneva, Switzerland
2019
Raqib Shaw: Landscapes of Kashmir, Pace, New York, NY, USA
2018
Raqib Shaw: Reinventing the Old Masters, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
2017
Raqib Shaw, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, UK
2016
Self Portraits, White Cube Bermondsey, London, UK
White Cube at Glyndebourne: Raqib Shaw, 2016 Glyndebourne Festival, Glyndebourne, UK
2015
New Sculptures and Paintings, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris, France
2014
Raqib Shaw: Paradise Lost, Pace Gallery, New York, NY, USA
2013
Raqib Shaw, Rudolfinium, Prague, Czech Republic
Raqib Shaw, Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester, UK
2012
Of Beasts and Super Beasts, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris, France
2011
Paradise Lost, White Cube, London, UK
2009
Absence of God, White Cube, London, UK
Absence of God, Karlsplatz Project Space, Kunsthalle Vienna, Vienna, Austria
2008
Raqib Shaw At The Met, The Metropollitan Museum, New York, NY, USA
2006
Art Now: Raqib Shaw, Tate Britain, London, UK
Raqib Shaw: Garden Of Earthly Delights, Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, Miami, FL, USA
2005
Raqib Shaw: Garden of Earthly Delights, Deitch Projects, New York, NY, USA
2004
Raqib Shaw: Garden of Earthly Delights, Victoria Miro Gallery, London, UK
2023
MIRROR/ MAZE: Echoes of song, space, spectre, Works from the KNMA collection, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, Delhi, India
Drawn into the Present: Portraits on Paper, Thaddaeus Ropac, London, UK
Beyond the Page: South Asian Miniature Painting and Britain, 1600 to Now, MK Gallery, Milton Keynes, UK
2019
Drawing Biennial 2019, Drawing Room, London, UK
2018
WOW! The Heidi Horten Collection, Leopold Museum, Vienna, Austria
2016
Drawing Biennial 2015, Drawing Room, London, UK
2015
Thief Among Thieves, Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, Denver, CO, USA
2014
Eurasia - A view on painting, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Pantin, France
2013
Group Exhibition, Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester, UK
2012
7th Asia Pacific Triennal, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia
Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK
The Best of Times, The Worst of Times - Rebirth and Apocalypse in Contemporary Art, ARSENALE The First Kiev International Biennale of Contemporary Art, Kiev, Ukraine
Phantoms of Asia, Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, CA, USA
2011
Asian Contemporary Art from Private Collections, Singapore Art Museum, Singapore
A Dream of Eternity, Villa Empain, Brussels, Belgium
Painting Between the Lines, CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco, CA, USA
East ex East, Brand New Gallery, Milan, Italy
2010
Kupferstichkabinett: Between Thought and Action, White Cube, London, UK
The Beauty of Distance - 17th Biennale of Sydney, Sydney, Australia
Resonance, Suntory Museum, Osaka, Japan
2009
Nightmare full of unspeakable things, Concept V, New York, NY, USA
Taswir: Pictorial Mappings of Islam and Modernity, Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, Germany
Flower Power, Villa Giulia, CRAA Centro Ricerca Arte Attuale, Verbania, Italy
Die Macht Des Ornaments (The Power Of Ornament), Belvedere, Vienna, Austria
2007
Panic room - Works from The Dakis Joannou Collection, DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece
2006
Around the World in Eighty Days, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, UK
The Sixth Gwangju Biennale: Fever Variation, Gwangju, South Korea
Without Boundary: Seventeen Ways of Looking, MoMA | The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, USA
Passion for Paint, National Gallery, London; Bristol City Museum, Bristol; Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle, UK
Dan Attoe, Elliot Hundley, Raqib Shaw: There's No Fooling You (The Classics), Peres Projects, Los Angeles, CA, USA
2005
Expanded Painting, Prague Biennale, Prague, Czech Republic
2004
Plantmania! Art and the World of Plants, Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens, Sunderland, UK
2003
Nation and Nature, Vaster than Empires, Hastings Museum and Art Gallery, Hastings; Worcester City Art Gallery, Worcester; The Yard Gallery, Nottingham; Lethaby Gallery, London, UK
2002
Direction 2002, The London Institute Gallery, London, UK
Chancellor's Forum, London College of Fashion, London, UK
2001
Future Map 2001, Lethaby Gallery, London, UK
UK
Tate, London
USA
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York