Art Basel 2018
Booth T7, Hall 2.1

WEST HEAVENS: Nilima Sheikh and Qiu Zhijie

The exhibition recalls China’s ancient reference to India as the ‘West Heavens’, presenting a visual dialogue between India and China. The evoked imagination of unified national culture and its relationship with a dominant international sphere has characterised many aspects of political, technological, cultural and artistic histories.

Private Days
June 12-13, 2018, 11am to 8pm

Public Days
June 14-17, 11am to 7pm

Venue
Messe Basel, Messeplatz 10, 4005 Basel, Switzerland

Nilima Sheikh

Nilima Sheikh    Terrain: Carrying Across, Leaving Behind    2016–2017    Mixed Media    Installation view: Neue Galerie, Kassel, documenta 14

Born in Delhi in 1945, Nilima Sheikh is one of India’s most celebrated artists. Over the last five decades, Sheik’s oeuvre has embraced multiple universes, composed in a unique visual language drifting between human journeys, landforms, and states of belonging. Her practice above all reflects a strong feminist commitment to representing the many facets of womanhood, in the realms of the sacred and the biographical, and as a social subject. She utilizes a variety of media and techniques, including paper, installations, large scrolls and screens, illustrations for children’s books, and theatre set designs. First exhibiting her work 1969, Sheikh has participated in numerous exhibitions world wide, including most recently documenta 14 (Athens and Kassel, 2017).

Qiu Zhijie

The Chinese Pavilion curated by Qiu Zhijie, 57th Venice Biennale, Arsenale, Venice

Born in Fujian Province, China, in 1969, Qiu Zhijie has created a formidable career and presence as a multidisciplinary artist, critic and curator. The encyclopaedic vision Qiu brings to his imaginative mappings of the human world, creating fantastic mind-scapes crossing categories cultural, political, institutional and more, open up systems of knowledge that invite the participation of all imaginative minds. Qiu’s recent projects include his curation of the Chinese Pavilion of the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017, and his commissioned project for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, for which he created a site-specific six-panel map as part of the exhibition Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World. Qiu is also currently a professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, one of the country’s most prestigious art academies.

Hanart TZ Gallery
+852 2526 9019      hanart@hanart.com      www.hanart.com