Raqib Shaw’s 100-Foot-Wide Autobiographical Painting Traces a Journey of Exile and Self-Discovery
Detail of “Paradise Lost” (2009–25). All images courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago, shared with permission
Raqib Shaw’s 100-Foot-Wide Autobiographical Painting Traces a Journey of Exile and Self-Discovery
July 8, 2025
Art
Grace Ebert
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In 1999, Raqib Shaw began pulling at the threads of what would become an autobiographical painting of loss and beauty. He had recently fled his native Kashmir for New Delhi and later London, where he enrolled at Central Saint Martins. Political upheaval sparked his departure and sent him into permanent exile, a destabilizing event that left him longing for home and required a courageous act of self-reinvention.
As epic as the 17th-century poem that shares its name, “Paradise Lost” is the culmination of these experiences. Composed of 21 panels that stretch 100 feet wide, the monumental work traces four chapters of the artist’s life, from childhood to 2015. Although Shaw first began thinking about the painting in 1999, he didn’t begin working on it in earnest until 2009. Today, the allegorical piece is on view for the first time in its entirety at the Art Institute of Chicago.
“Paradise Lost” (2009–25)
In an essay about the work, Shaw describes metaphor as central to the painting’s narrative. “In Kashmir, metaphor is intrinsic to the way people speak and think,” he says. “Metaphor, rather than directness, conveys meaning with the greatest precision and depth.”
The painting begins on the left, with a seated figure howling at the moon. Set in the Karakoram mountain ranges of Shaw’s youth, the scene reflects the innocence, solitude, and inner calm the artist associates with his childhood. Moving right reveals a bird being freed from its cage, a figure tied up while surrounded by ferocious snakes, and finally, a small hut devoid of all luxuries. This robe-clad subject is a self-portrait of the artist with his beloved dog, although he points out that he considers the painting to be more universal, writing:
It is a story of the many paradises we inevitably lose as we move through life: the paradise of childhood, of innocence, of excitement and anticipation, of novelty. We lose the ease of belonging and the calm of that mental stillness that comes from lack of anxiety. And while these losses are deeply personal, they are surely universally felt. We all carry such losses as we move through life and construct inner worlds in response.
To create such dazzling scenes with immense precision, Shaw utilizes syringes and porcupine quills to apply enamel paints typically used by the auto industry. Acrylic liner on gesso creates “a golden line almost like the leading of a stained glass window,” and inlaid stones and other small materials add glittering depth.
While “Paradise Lost” deals with heavy themes of displacement and grief, Shaw shares that beauty is at its center. “Not beauty as ornament but as necessity. I believe deeply that art has the power to transform sorrow into meaning, and it has this wonderful quality to alchemize personal pain into something luminous and enduring,” he writes.
“Paradise Lost” is on view through January 19, 2026. Find more from Shaw on his website and Instagram.
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