YET another title for Pakistan - YET another confirmation of the upward momentum of Pakistan visual arts
Last week, Pakistan art world received yet another award from the global art fraternity. Anila Quayyum Agha, an NCA alum, was the winner of both the juried as well as the public vote of the Michigan based ArtPrize2014.
Apart from taking home $300,000 in prize money, Ms Agha was the fist winner in the award's history to have won both public (whose votes decide the award) and the art experts (the jury).
Another feather in the cap of Pakistan Visual Arts and another confirmation of the depth as well as breadth of this movement.
Artwallaa finds this work exceptionally pleasing to the eye and have therefore added two articles with a lot of images.
Intersections by Pakistan-born Anila Quayyum Agha on display at the Grand Rapids Art Museum earlier this month.
Courtesy of the Grand Rapids Art Museum
Held annually since 2009 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, ArtPrize is a democratic art competition open to anyone in the world over age 18, with generous cash prizes awarded by both a jury of experts and popular vote. For the first time, a single work—Intersections by Pakistan-born Anila Quayyum Agha—took this year’s public and juried grand prizes for a total of $300,000.
Agha’s stunning piece is an obvious crowd-pleaser, a 6½-foot square laser-cut, black lacquer wood cube suspended from the ceiling and lit with a single light bulb that casts breathtaking 32-feet by 34-feet shadows to create instant architecture in an otherwise empty room.
Courtesy of ArtPrize
The artist, who is now an associate professor of drawing at the Herron School of Art and Design in Indianapolis, explains on her website that the work is based on the geometrical patterns used in Islamic sacred spaces.
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It was created to express what she describes as “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.”
Courtesy of ArtPrize
But the laser-cut wooden frieze was patterned after a design from the Alhambra fortress in Granada, Spain, “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,” she writes.*
Courtesy of Anila Quayyum Agha
Agha says that the project relies on the “purity and inner symmetry of geometric design,” adding that viewers bring their own interpretations to the shadows. “The form of the design and its layered, multidimensional variations will depend both on the space in which it is installed, the arrangement of the installation, and the various paths that individuals take while experiencing the space,” she writes.
anila quayyum agha casts a delicate web of shadows with a single light bulblaser-cut wood, single light bulb, 6.5′ square cube / cast shadows – 32′x34′
Winner of both the public and juried vote of artprize 2014, pakistani artist anila quayyum agha exercises the architecture of the grand rapids art museum in michigan by infilling it with a dynamic interplay of shadow and light. ‘intersections’ comprises a 6.5-foot laser-cut wooden cube pierced with carefully crafted patterns and illuminated from the inside, which casts expansive, lace-like geometries onto the surrounding walls, ceiling and floor.
visitors sit within the large-scale shadows cast on the walls (image courtesy of grand rapids art museum)
‘intersections’ mirrors the geometrical patterning present in islamic sacred spaces (image courtesy of artprize)
‘Intersections’ mirrors the geometrical patterning present in islamic sacred spaces, and is derived from the artists own experiences 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’, quayyum agha explains. ‘for me the familiarity of the space visited at the alhambra palace and the memories of another time and place from my past, coalesced in creating this project.’
the installation comprises a 6.5-foot laser-cut wooden cube, pierced with carefully crafted patterns
image courtesy of artprize
a single light illuminates the sculpture
image courtesy of artprize
image by carol lautenbach / courtesy of grand rapids art museum
image courtesy of grand rapids art museum
visitors are immersed in a web of intricately shaped shadows
(left) image courtesy of anila quayyum agha; (right) image courtesy of artprize
the grand rapids art museum is infilled with shadow and light
image courtesy of anila quayyum agha
patterns carved into the wood reference those found within islamic sacred spaces
(left) image courtesy of sarah’s throne; (right) image courtesy of artprize
anila quayyum agha casts a delicate web of shadows with a single light bulblaser-cut wood, single light bulb, 6.5′ square cube / cast shadows – 32′x34′
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