The Garden of Earthly Delights V

ca. 2004

born 1974, Calcutta, India

Raqib Shaw creates a dizzying underwater world both fantastical and campy, where hybrid animal and humanoid creatures coexist with other aquatic life. The title of Shaw’s piece is borrowed from Hieronymous Bosch’s famous triptych, in which the central panel overflows with earthly pleasures in a lush garden and the panel to the right depicts eternal punishment. Shaw collapses Bosch’s panels into one aqueous underworld, where pleasure and pain are intertwined. Beneath Shaw’s kitsch aesthetic lies his personal sorrow and his memories of fleeing Kashmir with his family. His idea of paradise is thus grounded in the physical and real space of Kashmir.

Mixed media on board

47 5/8 x 83 7/8 in. (121 x 213cm)

Gift of Rebecca and Alexander Stewart

2004.97

Not currently on view

Resources

Exhibition HistorySeattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, Fresh Impressionism, June 19 - Sept. 21, 2008.

Seattle, Washington, Seattle Asian Art Museum, Be/longing: Contemporary Asian Art, Feb. 8, 2020 - ongoing [on view July 16 - Dec. 5, 2021].

Seattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, Our Blue Planet: Global Visions of Water, Mar. 18 - May 30, 2022.

Seattle Art Museum respectfully acknowledges that we are on Indigenous land, the traditional territories of the Coast Salish people. We honor our ongoing connection to these communities past, present, and future.

Learn more about Equity at SAM