This essay examines the work of contemporary artist Shahzia Sikander through her engagement with the imperial tradition of Indo-Persian painting and the colonial legacy of its unhomely archival condition in cultural institutions. Integrating her research-based practice within the contemporary archival turn, I consider how her strategies of palimpsestic layering and assemblage allow her to form new encounters within a dispersed archive of South Asian visual heritage. Sikander collapses and expands the borders of Indo-Persian painting to reveal the generative potential of reclaiming traditional materials and practices in a contemporary artmaking practice.