We are in those uncanny waters where borders are drawn not only on land but also across fierce waves; where colonial ambitions have evolved from opium fields to oil wells. Victoria Miro, one of London’s prestigious galleries, invites art lovers to a striking historical reckoning with “High Seas; Closed Skies,” the first solo exhibition at the gallery by the world-renowned New York-based Pakistani artist Shahzia Sikander. Remaining open until July 31, 2026, this exhibition juxtaposes traditional miniature art with digital animation, mosaic, and gouache, honestly deciphering the dark and intricate trade networks between the British Empire, Mughal India, and Qing Dynasty China.
At the conceptual center of gravity of the exhibition lies the moving image titled “3 to 12 Nautical Miles,” which first resonated this spring on the facade of the monumental M+ museum in Hong Kong. Taking its name from that uncanny legal gray zone where states claim sovereignty and colonial powers test one another, this animation breathes life into digital pixels from Sikander’s handmade ink and gouache drawings. Presented in London for the first time with a custom sound design by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Du Yun, the work turns into a striking historical irony when viewed in this city, where the charter of the East India Company was approved. Contrary to colonial archives, the artist registers the truth that history refused to record by showing not burning Chinese vessels, but the supposedly invincible British warships of the period, HMS Nemesis and HMS Wellesley, engulfed in flames. In the midst of this arithmetic of exploitation, the sampans carrying the trade of the local people first appear as tiny dots on the screen, then cover the entire surface, exposing the massive scale of the exploitation.
Sikander’s world of critical thought is not limited to digital pixels, but deepens further with mosaic and gouache works rising on the gallery walls. In the piece titled “Possessed,” Queen Victoria appears before us sealed with mosaic tiles within a typically Victorian oval frame, like a traditional porcelain cameo or locket. Carrying maps of colonized India and Hong Kong around her neck like jewels, the crown of the usurped Mughal court rises behind Victoria’s head. The artist subtly satirizes the empire’s forced gathering of fragmented, shattered geographies and calling it “order” through the unifying power of mosaic. Within this false wholeness, Victoria shines as the only figure permitted to forget that she, too, is actually composed of fragments.
The temporal fluidity of colonialism transforms into a much more concrete political argument in the monumental gouache work titled “The Alchemist.” In this piece, Queen Victoria’s dress, rising like a monument, curves downward to articulate into the valves, pipes, and equipment of an active oil well. The colonialism of the 19th century, financed by the opium trade, is thus flawlessly transferred into today’s petro-political system of exploitation. By reminding us how the colonial mindset that dominated the seas yesterday blocks the Strait of Hormuz today—through which one-fifth of the world’s oil passes—Sikander declares that the past is indeed the present itself.
Against that arrogant and invasive image of Queen Victoria, another portrait rises in the exhibition room, embodying the aesthetics of resistance: the mosaic portrait of American feminist poet and thinker Adrienne Rich. Where Victoria wore lands around her neck like an ornament, Rich exposed the colonial and patriarchal violence within language for fifty years. The geometric red lines of Safavid architecture, which divide Rich’s face like a map, shatter colonial uniformity. The fact that the poet translated the ghazals of classical Urdu poet Mirza Ghalib into English also places her in an organic link with the Indo-Persian miniature tradition from which Sikander draws inspiration. Just as each couplet of a ghazal is independent within itself and the poem rises through an accumulation of parts rather than a forced conclusion, the pixels, mosaic tiles, and brushstrokes in the exhibition accumulate piece by piece to build the silent but powerful architecture of the whole.
The exhibition does not leave the viewer entirely hopeless in the midst of colonial destruction, offering a space of repair through works like “The Hour Glass” and “The Charter Star.” Two facing figures connected by orange-green roots emerging from their legs herald a freely chosen cross-border friendship and healing, in contrast to colonial border crises and forced migrations. A single red lotus flower beneath the oval frame symbolizes an ancient awakening where everything can begin anew. In the adjacent “The Charter Star,” as the colonial East India Company men, scattered like a dust cloud, melt away amidst gouache and gold leaf, the shamsa—the symbol of enlightenment in the miniature tradition—shines above all this historical chaos like a token of justice. Shahzia Sikander proves that colonialism is not just a dusty history left in books, but continues to shape our lives today through underwater pipelines and maritime borders. This exhibition at Victoria Miro is a striking masterpiece that melts traditional elegance and political rage in the same crucible, and it must absolutely be added to your radar if your path crosses London.
