“My work has a diasporic sense, of leaving but also carrying the memory of a culture,” says the Calcutta-born painter Raqib Shaw, who moved to London at 24 to study art. “The fabulous thing about it is, the more you look, the more it will reward you.” Using a porcupine quill to achieve his desired level of detail, Shaw creates fantastical scenes that evoke his childhood in the melting pot of Kashmir as well as the international crises and disasters that colored his history. In Ode to the Country without a Post Office (2019–20), Kashmir is engulfed in bursts of bright flame as zombie-like people outlined in neon yellow descend into the madness and heat. “It’s traumatizing out there, my darling,” says Shaw. His work is simultaneously otherworldly and of the world: sublime elements of magic and mysticism abound in each painting while his style merges the West’s “Old Master” tradition with the cultural touchstones of his youth. Curated by Zehra Jumabhoy, a historian who specializes in the art of South Asia, the Frist exhibition includes some of Shaw’s most striking pieces. —Nyla Gilstrap