During the national lockdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Shaw set out to build an alpine rockery at his South London studio based on his childhood memories of the flora and fauna in the Karakoram mountains of Kashmir. After experimenting with its scenery and scale, this mountainous landscape-in-miniature became the subject for Shaw’s new group of paintings and drawings, which focus on the artist as a lone protagonist, set within allegorical, landscape scenes.

The narrative of the artist’s life can be seen to begin with the work Edgy Spring, in which Shaw depicts himself tending to his narcissi; sitting precariously, legs dangling on the edge of his rockery – here re-imagined as a huge cliff – and paying little attention to the ravine below.

The solemnity of Edgy Spring is countered by the work Sacred Summer in which the artist-as-gardener appears rewarded for his toils by a rich, luxuriant border of orange and red flowers, which curves along the bottom of the image, nestled within a rocky terrain. Kneeling next to his faithful companion – a small dog, half-turned towards the viewer – the artist offers a trowel of soil to the heavens in a gesture of gratitude for nature’s bounty.

In these self-portraits, I feature dressed in my Uchikake Kimono with my dogs – […] when composing new works, I stage photo-shoots in which I appear adorned in my Kimono or a Jamawar shawl and surrounded by various artefacts and objects from flowers and fruit to Japanese parasols, tulwar swords, sitting on Renaissance Savonarola chairs – the list is endless. Each item is carefully and strategically placed and I am constantly toying with symbolism…

– Raqib Shaw

Only Hope shows the artist again dressed in an elaborate kimono, but this time taking refuge inside an old woodshed, a reference to the figure of the Virgin Mary in Tintoretto’s The Adoration of the Shepherds (1578-81).

Rather than nursing a Christ child, however, here the protagonist sits on a bed of straw and waters his narcissi using a long, elegant, bronze watering can; an act undertaken with intense concentration yet laden with pathos.

Shaw has remarked that while his fantastical imagery is idiosyncratic, it can be considered a reflection on the human condition in general and the individual’s sometimes painful journey through life.

The sense of something sinister, even diseased, within natural beauty, creeping up and overwhelming us, gives potent impact to [...] the hybrid aquatic/animal/human forms lurking in toxic/gorgeous settings evoked by Raqib Shaw.

– Jackie Wullschläger, 2020

We certainly become what we think, and steering towards positivity by embracing beauty in art and nature is the only way forward for me. Ultimately, my paintings celebrate the resilience of man, the ability to transform sorrow into beauty and finally, the acceptance of inevitable change that feeds the cycle of life itself.

– Raqib Shaw