Anila Quayyum Agha creates a communal space for all

One of the most highly sought-after artists working in the United States today, Anila Quayyum Agha is renowned for immersive installations that combine color, geometry, pattern, and, above all, light to elicit wonder and a sense of endless possibility. This exhibition—a nationally touring mid-career retrospective for which the Frist Art Museum is the final venue—traces the past two decades of Agha’s work. Encompassing intimately scaled beaded and embroidered drawings as well as her better-known monumental light installations, the exhibition shows the artist’s expansive creativity and the centrality of textiles to her practice. Born in Lahore, Pakistan, in 1965, Agha moved to the United States in 1999 and now resides in Indianapolis, Indiana. Her experiences as a woman and an immigrant dealing with discrimination, invisibility, and oppression inform her art. She is also concerned with environmental devastation and its disproportionate impact on poor nations. Her influences include the California Light and Space Movement, Indo-Islamic architecture, poetry, and the patterns and techniques of traditional crafts. Highlights of this exhibition include A Flood of Tears, a sculpture made of hundreds of upholstery needles suspended by glistening glass-beaded strands, and All the Flowers Are for Me (Red), one of Agha’s signature laser-cut steel light boxes that bathe viewers in light and shadow. These renowned installations are contextualized with the artist’s two-dimensional works that utilize a mix of patterns and words, printmaking techniques, dyes, beads, threads, Mylar, waxes, and even steel dust to make ornate forms. Through these lyrical, mesmerizing works of art, Agha wrestles with some of the most urgent issues of our time.