CHICAGO, IL.- The Art Institute of Chicago is presenting Raqib Shaw: Paradise Lost, which is on view June 7, 2025–January 19, 2026. The installation is centered on a singular piece—a more than 100-foot-wide, 21 panel painting, Paradise Lost. The work, by the Kashmiri, London-based artist Raqib Shaw, is the most ambitious and personal project of his career to date. It presents an immersive, spellbinding journey through autobiography, mythology, and visionary imagination, which he started envisioning in 1999 and began creating in 2009.


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Paradise Lost is presented as a continuous unfolding of Shaw’s life in four chapters. Each panel of the work is dense with symbolism: mythical beasts, anthropomorphic hybrids, collapsing kingdoms, and natural beauty in various states of transformation.

While early chapters of Paradise Lost have been shown in galleries elsewhere, this marks the first time all four chapters will be displayed together, showcasing the fullest extent yet of this epic painting.

Shaw, born in Calcutta and raised in the Kashmir Valley in the Himalayan mountains draws on the landscapes and memories of his early life, which was fractured by political upheaval. His work is influenced by a broad range of sources—Mughal and Persian miniatures, Renaissance altarpieces, Japanese art, Kashmiri and Urdu poetry, and Hindu and Western mythology—and yet his visual vocabulary and technique are all his own.

This installation showcases Shaw’s unique signature artistic style which involves using automobile enamel paints with needle-fine syringes and manipulating those with a porcupine quill. He even adds glittering inset stones that enhance the magical quality of the depicted scenes.

“With this installation, visitors will have the opportunity to see this monumental painting in all its breathtaking details—technique, size, as well as depth,” said Madhuvanti Ghose, Alsdorf Associate Curator of Indian, Southeast Asian, and Himalayan Art, Arts of Asia. “While visitors will revel at the beauty of this work, they are encouraged to slow down, take a close look, and reflect on how this may resonate with their own personal experiences and life story in tandem with Shaw’s.”

The painting is not a direct retelling of Milton’s 17th-century poem, Paradise Lost. However, Shaw intends it as a reflection on the many paradises lost across a lifetime: childhood innocence, creative freedom, mental tranquility, cultural belonging.

Raqib Shaw: Paradise Lost is curated by Madhuvanti Ghose, Alsdorf Associate Curator of Indian, Southeast Asian, and Himalayan Art, Arts of Asia.


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