Curated by Roobina Karode, Director and Chief Curator, KNMA, the exhibition brings together over one hundred works from KNMA’s collection, alongside select loans from institutions and private collections. Reimagined from Sheikh’s recent retrospective at KNMA Saket, the exhibition is newly situated within Kochi’s cultural context.

Sheikh’s work engages deeply with history, memory, and the coexistence of multiple temporalities and cultures. Drawing from Indian miniature painting, Mughal and Persian traditions, Renaissance art, modernism, literature, and poetry, he constructs layered visual narratives that resist fixed identities and linear histories. His practice is grounded in humanist inquiry, addressing questions of violence, coexistence, and ethical reflection.

The exhibition is organised around three recurring concerns in Sheikh’s work: the city, journeys, and mapping. Key works such as City for Sale (1981–84) and Ahmedabad: The City Gandhi Left Behind (2015–16) respond to moments of political unrest and urban transformation, embedding lived experience within fractured cityscapes. These works are held in dialogue with recurring figures of non-violence and moral inquiry, including Gandhi, Saint Francis, and the poet Kabir.

Narrative is central to Sheikh’s practice. His engagement with kaavad and accordion book formats draws from vernacular storytelling traditions, reconfigured into contemporary visual forms. Works such as Kaavad: Travelling Shrine: Home (2008) translate narrative into immersive spatial experience, while his accordion books disrupt linear reading through mutable configurations.

Sheikh’s Mappamundi series reconsiders cartography as a site of imagination and cultural exchange, populating mapped worlds with figures drawn from diverse histories and geographies. Recent works, including Kaarawaan (2019–2023), extend these concerns through expansive compositions shaped by journeys both literal and metaphoric

The exhibition is accompanied by archival materials including poetry, writings, photographs, and recorded reflections, situating Sheikh’s artistic practice within a broader intellectual and pedagogical framework. Works by close contemporaries and friends such as Jyoti Bhatt, Nasreen Mohamedi, Bhupen Khakhar, and Vivan Sundaram foreground a shared artistic milieu grounded in dialogue, exchange, and collective practice.