Hong Kong’s M+ museum has selected Pakistani American artist Shahzia Sikander‘s hand-painted animated film 3 to 12 Nautical Miles (2026) for its latest commission for M+ Facade, an enormous LED-embedded media screen measuring approximately several hundred feet across. Co-commissioned by M+ and Art Basel, the work will screen from March 23 through June 21.

3 to 12 Nautical Miles (2026) continues Sikander’s interpretation of the entangled histories of empire and commerce, linking Imperial Britain, the Indian subcontinent, and Qing China within a broader examination of the transmission of visual language and form across these regions. The animation chronicles the waning sway of the Mughal Empire under Akbar II, its intersection with the Qing dynasty in a period of internal turmoil, and the East India Company’s transition from a mercantile entity to a colonial power, culminating in the First Opium War—sparked by Britain’s opium cultivation in India and its trade with China, and the contested nature of maritime borders.