Anila Quayyum Agha: A Flood of Tears
October 24 through December 4, 2011
Stewart Center Gallery
In her art as in her life, Agha has referenced divergent geographies, languages, and cultures. Growing up in Pakistan under the restrictive gender assignations of sharia law, her “use of the needle and thread embodies an essential femaleness and represents the domestic identity of women and their ambivalent relationships to that identity.”
She mixes mediums fluently, working primarily on paper with paint, wax, dyes (often tea or coffee), collage elements, staining and calligraphy. Large-scale installations of thread, paper and/or cut cloth bring her imagery into a larger, more “male” spatial context while retaining the handcrafted quality so instinctive to her work.