Touchstone uses intricate glass mosaic tiles to depict an Indian woman holding a chalawa (a Punjabi term for a type of ghost or spirit). This spirit, which cannot be confined and escapes the woman’s grasp, symbolizes the paradox of holding on to something unbound. According to the artist, this work addresses “struggle and conflict, memory and migrancy, and meditation on symbols of extraction, with links to nature, to imagination, and art as sources of abundance as opposed to the desiccating logic of extraction.” In this way, Shahzia Sikander asks us to ponder how we can and cannot impact the world around us. Touchstone imagines the power of bodiless aspects of our lives through relationships with each other and the world, recognizing that we do not always hold this power in our hands.