Nilima Sheikh's art practice from 1969 to 2012 forms the subject of Trace Retrace. The book is structured in three parts: visual, discursive, and a combination of the two. The largest narrative is visual a selection from Nilima Sheikh's paintings in diverse formats, chosen to signal the artist's commitment to process, and to indicate the way her paintings slide into, work with and against each other, and propose a meandering seriality. The often extensive reproduction of details from these paintings introduces the unexpected, eliciting not only a flitting or looping gaze but also surprise.

The complexity of Nilima Sheikh's art practice lends itself to other forms of engagement, as is evident in the second part of the book comprising three diverse readings: "Ruptures, Junctures, Returns: (un)lived histories, feminist propositions and Nilima Sheikh" by Kumkum Sangari; "A Counter-Archive of Pain and Loss: Nilima Sheikh's evolving Kashmir series" by Ananya Jahanara Kabir; and "Passages in Reverie: Nilima Sheikh, modernity and the history of Kashmir" by Kaushik Bhaumik.