I mean, I would have died years and years ago if it wasn't for painting.

Painting -- it's all I do.

And it's not -- it's not -- it's not my choice.

It's a necessity.

And I feel that art is something that, in the end, does really save mankind, I believe so.

If there is -- I mean, it's my definition of God, I think.

♪♪ Hello.

My name is Raqib Shaw.

And this is how art changed me.

About two and a half years ago, my -- I mean, my -- my complete -- my whole world, in a way, collapsed.

And I realized that every single thing that happened in my life was, in a way, preordained.

And I felt like a puppet because whatever happened in my life had to happen for these paintings to exist the way they are existing.

Certain things have happened in my life that at the end of the day, they've left me with -- with absolutely nothing to do but paint these damn things.

Because 25 years of doing nothing but engaging with these pieces of wood is quite something.

These paintings just come to me.

I just -- You know, uh, I never had that problem of, "Oh, what do I do next?"

Or, "Where do I get inspiration from?"

I was born in Calcutta, and I grew up in Kashmir.

And I think for the first, um, I would say 16 years of my life, I was living in Kashmir.

It was a very beautiful life.

It was, you know -- Kashmir is an incredibly beautiful place with the mountains and the wonderful gardens.

It was a perfect, idyllic life that I thought that, you know, I would -- I would just continue being there.

But then in 1988, uh, the great troubles started, and there was a civil war.

That is when my family decided that it was a good idea to leave.

I came to England in 1993 -- was my first time.

And I did not really know that I was going to be an artist or a painter, you know?

I had no idea.

You know, my family, they were merchants, and I was destined to be one of them and work in the family business like everyone else did.

And then I went to the National Gallery in London, and I saw the Holbein paintings.

I saw the masters, to be precise.

The painting of merchants.

And I realized that I would want to be -- I would not want to be the merchant.

I would be the one who paints them.

It would be fair to say that it was that one painting that, uh, changed my mind and that convinced me that I would be a painter one day.

In 1998, I went to art college.

I had absolutely no money whatsoever.

And I did not have a place to live.

I was squatting in this place called Hackney Wick, which is quite gentrified now, but back then, it was quite a terrible place.

It was very, very rough.

It was as rough as, uh, you know, certain parts of London could get.

And I was squatting on top of a peanut factory called Percy Dalton's Peanut Factory.

And I remember that it had -- Uh, there was no heating.

There was no hot water.

And that is how I went through my four years of degree and one more year of making the work before I was picked up by a gallery.

And I tell you, it was -- it was fun and I had a great time.

But there are certain paintings that I made in that period.

For example, there was the "Garden of Earthly Delights" series.

When I look at any painting from that series, I feel really cold because it was really, really cold.

It was very, very cold.

And then, of course, things happened, and then, uh, one of my paintings came up into auction, and it sold for a fairly large price.

And then the depression started.

Then then I went into deep depression for about 15 years.

I completely withdrew and I started making -- I deliberately started making paintings that were very ugly.

That's why that series that I made during that time was called "Absence of God."

A very, very violent Series.

And, of course, I was not well.

It was -- I was in an absolute mess.

And then after that, uh, was the "Paradise Lost" series, which again, um, was a lot about exile and finding myself very, very alone in a place where the only thing that kept me going on was my belief in the paintings.

So that was the time that the paintings became -- started becoming even more autobiographical.

When I was growing up in Kashmir, it was, um -- I was exposed to a lot of, uh, Sufi poetry.

The first thing that you -- that stayed with me was this thing of, uh, if you really want to achieve anything in life, you have to go inside, and you'll find everything in there.

There is something that we put in the paintings without knowing, be it suffering, be it angst, be it whatever it is, and it gets stuck in the paintings, you know?

And we as humans, it doesn't matter whether we understand art or we don't.

We can feel that something.

And I've seen that increasingly.

These paintings from, you know, since, uh, quite some time, I feel that -- I always have felt that these are not really things that, uh, are relevant to me in terms of, uh, "Oh, I'm making them for myself."

Increasingly, I believe that these are for generations to follow.

And that's why they do record the time and our day and age and I think the human condition, which at the end of the day is universal.

♪♪