Intersections

source: thewaking

The Intersections project takes the seminal experience of exclusion as a woman from a space of community and creativity such as a Mosque and translates the complex expressions of both wonder and exclusion that have been my experience while growing up in Pakistan. The wooden frieze emulates a pattern from the Alhambra, which was poised at the intersection of history, culture and art and was a place where Islamic and Western discourses, met and co-existed in harmony and served as a testament to the symbiosis of difference. I have given substance to this mutualism with the installation project exploring the binaries of public and private, light and shadow, and static and dynamic. This installation project relies on the purity and inner symmetry of geometric design, the interpretation of the cast shadows and the viewer’s presence with in a public space..
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
source: alphaomegaarts

Anila Quayyum Agha is one of the finalists in the 3rd annual See.Me : Year In Review competition, an international, all-medium-encompassing open call for art. Aga’s large scale patterned wood project explores the intersections of culture and religion, and a smaller version of this was included in the 2013 A&O Prize exhibition. “The Intersections project takes the seminal experience of exclusion as a woman from a space of community and creativity such as a Mosque,” wrote Aga, “and translates the complex expressions of both wonder and exclusion that have been my experience while growing up in Pakistan. ”
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
source: visualnews

Light and shadow play upon the walls and ceiling of the room, cast by Anila Quayyum Agha’s new large scale wooden sculpture, called Intersections. The intricately patterned wooden cube contains an interior light-source which illuminates the gallery around it with geometric forms that draw their inspiration from the intersections of culture and religion. The piece measures 6.5 feet square and projects shadows around a 35 by 32 foot room. The artwork has been selected as a finalist for the 3rd Annual See.Me Year in Review Competition.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
source: herroniupuiedu

Anila Quayyum Agha was born and raised in Lahore, Pakistan, where she completed her BFA in Textile Arts in 1991. Having relocated to Dallas, TX in 2000, she completed her MFA in Fiber Arts from the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas in 2004.

Agha has an extensive exhibition record here in the USA and has won numerous awards for her artwork, such as the Fort Worth Dealers Association Award, for her participation in Art in the Metroplex, at the Templeton Art Center, Curated by James Elaine in Fort Worth, Texas in 2005. She has also participated in Juried shows like the Texas National, at the Stephen F. Austin State University in 2006 curated by Paul Brach. She was included in the Texas Biennial in 2009, which was curated by Michael Duncan and exhibited in multiple venues in Austin, Texas.

In 2005, Agha was an Artist in Resident at the Center for Contemporary Craft, Houston, TX and taught for three years at the University level in Houston, TX. In 2008 she relocated to Indianapolis and is the Assistant Professor of Drawing at The Herron School of Art at IUPUI in Indianapolis, IN. In November 2009 Agha was the recipient of the prestigious Efroymson Arts Fellowship awarded to five artists from Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio. She has also received an IAHI and two New Frontiers grants for research and travel to Pakistan and the United Kingdom. In 2010 Agha was included in a group show at The Bohemian National Hall, New York City, NY. The Substantialis Corporis Mixti (Substantial Form Of The Blended Body) was curated by Mark Cervenka and sponsored by The Czech Republic and organized by Safe Planet: the United Nations Campaign for Responsibility on Hazardous Chemicals and Wastes. Additionally this year, she has had two solo international art shows in Pakistan in the spring of 2010. To end the year 2010 she was included in the show titled What Will Be: The Visual And Performing Arts For A Safe Planet. This was an International Group Show, Curated by Eileen Haring Woods & Barbara Benish, and exhibited at the Universidad Tecnologica De Cancun, under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Cancun, Mexico.

Agha works in a cross disciplinary fashion with mixed media; creating artwork that explores and comments on global politics, cultural multiplicity, mass media, and social and gender roles in our current cultural and global scenario. As a result her artwork is conceptually challenging, producing complicated weaves of thought, artistic action and social experience.