Community, connection, and coexistence
Mar. 25—Consider this a jumping off point: the Alhambra, the famed architectural marvel built as a palace and fortress complex in Granada, Spain, in the mid-13th century, is noted for its intricate design motifs, which embody the ideals of Moorish Spain. One such ideal is that of La Convivencia (coexistence), an academic term denoting a philosophy dating to the Muslim Umayyad conquest of Spain in the Medieval era, when Muslims, Christians, and Jews of the Iberian Peninsula lived in relative peace under Moorish rule.
It's not just the ornate and delicate scrollwork of the Alhambra that inspired Pakistani-American artist Anila Quayyum Agha to create her immersive sculptural work Intersections in 2014 so much as it is this idea of coexistence. Although the Alhambra contains mosques, it's a secular complex overall. But places of worship found throughout the Islamic world also inform Agha's work. Contrary, perhaps, to the idea of convivencia, mosques are often segregated by gender. Intersections, however, sectioned into separate halls for men and women and requires no religious affiliations as a prerequisite. It's for everyone.
Intersections is a seminal work by the artist, and it's currently on display in the exhibit Mysterious Inner Worlds at the University of New Mexico Art Museum (through July 2). The sculptural element of the work, which relies on a bare interior light for its full effect, isn't all that large. It's a six-sided cube, measuring 78-by-78-by-78 inches, made of steel. Each of its six sides are laced with an elaborate network of laser-cut designs. That's the sculpture, but the work itself envelopes the floor, ceiling, and walls in a dazzling display of light and shadow, not to mention any visitor who walks into the room where it's installed. All of those elements, which are exterior to the sculpture itself, essentially become a part of it.
"Once I've appropriated something from, say, a building that I took a photograph of, or was surrounded by — architecture that looked Islamic in some way or form — I change it to fit my new paradigm," says the 57-year-old artist and educator. "It's sort of like a combination of the East and the West. It's not solely Islamic, although that's where I start from much of the time."
And the light, which casts floral and star-like mandalas about the room, is of primary importance. The bulb hangs, suspended in the center of the cube, like a divine soul in the center of being.
"I think that a lot of people in the world don't realize how difficult it would be to live without light," Agha says. "In the old days, they used candlelight, but imagine if we were suddenly plunged into darkness because the sun went away."
Mysterious Inner Worlds is the first in-person exhibition at the museum since it went into lockdown in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic, and it's the first time that Agha's work has been shown in New Mexico.
Entering from the lobby, the darkened space, illuminated by the light in Intersections, is inviting and mystifying in equal measure. One almost has the sense of entering a sacred space. But Agha effectively takes the idea of what is sacred and extends it into the secular domain.
"Very often, her work will be a single piece, like Intersections, that's so dramatic it holds a room," says Mary Statzer, the museum's curator of prints and photographs, who curated the exhibition. "But I'm really happy that we have a broader display of her work."
Intersections is one of four light-activated sculptures in the exhibition, which includes the debut of Steel Garden (Red) from 2021. It's a wall-mounted, laser-cut work of red-lacquered steel which extends out from the wall just enough for its floral designs to cast a vibrant shadow, lending it greater depth.
A series of seven embroidered works on paper, which are on view in the exhibit, capture another aspect that drives all of Agha's artistic practice. It's the idea of memory and personal connection. Each work on paper is a mixed media creation, including one that lends its title to the name of the show. Mysterious Inner Worlds (Gold), was created in 2021 with encaustic, charcoal, pastel, cut paper, mylar, embroidery, and beads. Its delicate, scrolling, lacework pattern recalls not just the symmetrical silhouettes of some Islamic architecture, but the patterns used in textile design. Offset from its center is a dark area that beckons the viewer, hinting at a world beyond the surface.
"She has a really strong history of textile and fiber arts in her background, and I think that's really evident in her 2D works," Statzer says.
Agha's embroidered works were created, in part, to honor the memory of her mother's quilting circles.
"Artists go back to their own roots to find connections," says Agha, the Morris Eminent Scholar in Art at Augusta University in Georgia. "For me to find something locally, that I've lived with here, is not enough. I need to go and excavate my memories around something that I've become enamored by. I start from a place I knew and was enmeshed in when I lived in Pakistan as an adolescent, because a lot of your formative experiences happen when you're very young."
The quilting circles were not just places to for engaging in creative activities but places where women could commune.
"Women often nurture that kind of environment where they talk with their friends — confide in their female friends, their gendered friends — and it helps us to solve the world in a different way than men. My mom was able to help some of these women by giving them money to work on the quilts. It wasn't just a labor of love. It was about trying to elevate other women simultaneously."
Agha was born and raised in Lahore, Pakistan, where she obtained her BFA in 1989 from the National College of Art, studying textile design. Her interest in textiles informs not just her embroidered drawings but her sculpture as well. Steel Garden (Red), for instance, adapts motifs from the 19th-century textile and wallpaper designs of British textile designer, artist, and poet William Morris.
But sewing, quilting, and embroidery — activities that inform much of her two-dimensional works — are traditionally regarded as women's work, and, historically, were regarded as craft rather than fine art.
When Agha moved to the United States to attend graduate school at the University of North Texas, where she earned a master of fine arts in fiber arts in 2004, her instructors often turned her focus to the arts of the West. She felt discouraged from exploring her own background.
"At that time, I was so young and unsure of my abilities and all that, so I never really questioned what they were pushing me to focus on. In my last year of my graduate studies, I became insistent that the work I was making was relevant to me. I couldn't be something that I wasn't."
Perhaps the key element that ties her multimedia projects together is the sense of community, or inclusiveness, which finds its most explicit expression in works like Intersections. She draws on motifs prevalent in sacred spaces and brings them into the public sphere.
"If you think about the intention of community building, wouldn't you consider that sacred, considering the point of history that we are living in, where so much of this country and the rest of the world is becoming very divided?" she asks. "We are moving toward a more fascist or tyrannical environment politically. I think the moment is ripe for trying to create a sense of community. Having a place where you can become one with everybody else — having that sacred intention of creating community — could be a really potent way to realize that the kinds of clothes you're wearing, the kind of car you're driving, or what mosque or synagogue or church you go to — are those even relevant to the lived experience? We really need to take care of things together, regardless of what our affiliations are."
Agha's artistic intentions counter the narratives of exclusion and exclusivity. After 9/11, she says, there was discrimination against people who looked like her and spoke like her. Back in Pakistan, she faced exclusion from places of worship based on her gender.
"What if we built community that would allow us to bridge those gaps?" she asks. "Wouldn't that make it a better life for everybody? That's where I come from."