HONG KONG | M+, Asia’s global museum of contemporary visual culture in the West Kowloon Cultural District (WestK) in Hong Kong, is proud to present 3 to 12 Nautical Miles (2026) by Pakistani-American artist Shahzia Sikander.
Co-commissioned by M+ and Art Basel, and presented by UBS, this radiant cinematic tableau, animated from hand-painted images, navigates the enduring currents of power and trade that have shaped the global landscape from the nineteenth century to the modern era.
In 3 to 12 Nautical Miles, Sikander traces the entangled histories of empire, trade, and maritime power that linked the British East India Company, Mughal India, and Qing China.
This animation charts the decline of Mughal authority under Akbar II, the internal strains of the Qing dynasty, and the East India Company’s rise from commercial venture to territorial power.
Within this context, the work interrogates Britain’s opium cultivation in India, its coercive trade with China, and the First Opium War, exposing the mechanisms of imperial extraction and the deep power asymmetries between Britain and China at the time.
Featured on the M+ Facade, Sikander’s animation magnifies the painted gestures, objects, and symbols that signal how authority was constructed, distributed, and contested, from Indian fields and ports to Chinese treaty cities and British naval power.
It also examines how authority remains vulnerable, especially in places like the sea, where boundaries are never fully fixed.
Grounded in research on Chinese trade art at the Hong Kong Museum of Art and Hong Kong Maritime Museum, the work is rooted in historical detail and visual specificity.
Through these complex histories, Sikander highlights empire as an interconnected global imperial economy built of coercion, extraction, and shifting power.
“This commission to create a new work for M+’s iconic facade has offered me an opportunity to extend my previous projects in Hong Kong into a deeper historical inquiry. 3 to 12 Nautical Miles traces the city’s emergence at a locus of intersecting empires, markets, and cultures, where the opium trade and the sea converged,” said Sikander.
“This time-based cinematic work echoes the idea of the sea through ink, movement, and particle systems, alluding to water and ocean as conduits of imperial power, commercial exchange, and political control.”
In conjunction with the commission, the artist will present a free illustrated lecture about her trailblazing art practice on Thursday, the 26th of March, in the M+ Cinema.
As part of Art Basel Hong Kong's Premiere Artist Talk, Sikander will also discuss her unique perspective on power, trade, and global exchange in a conversation with Doryun Chong, Artistic Director and Chief Curator of M+, on Wednesday, the 25th of March at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre.
A selection of the artist’s earlier animations, created over the past two decades, will be presented as free drop-in screenings, all day, every day from Tuesday, the 24th of March to Sunday, the 29th of March, also in the M+ Cinema.
The commission marked the fifth consecutive year of collaboration between M+ and Art Basel, presented by UBS, in activating the M+ Facade.
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