Shimmering Mirage - Red
2019
Anila Quayyum Agha
Indianapolis, Indiana
Artworks shown are selected from works submitted by the artist in their grant or residency application. All works are copyright of the artist or artist’s estate.
About Anila Quayyum Agha
Anila Quayyum Agha was born in Lahore, Pakistan. She received a BFA from the National College of Arts, Lahore, and an MFA from University of North Texas. Agha resides in Indianapolis, IN, and Augusta, GA. In 2020, Agha was appointed the Morris Eminent Scholar in Art at Augusta University in Georgia. Agha's work has been exhibited in numerous museums, including Kew: Royal Botanical Gardens, London, UK; Museum of Oriental Art, Turin, Italy; The Bruce Museum, Greenwich, CT; Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA; and National Sculpture Museum, Valladolid, Spain. Agha was included in the 2019 Venice Biennale collateral event, She Persists. Her major awards include the Efroymson Contemporary Arts Fellowship (2009), ArtPrize (Juried and Public Vote Grand Prize, 2014), a Research Scholar Award from Indiana University, the Cincinnati Art Museum Schiele Prize (2017), and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant (2019). In 2020 she was awarded the Smithsonian Fellowship in the Arts. Her work has been collected by institutions and private collectors nationally and internationally.
Program Participation
Painters & Sculptors Grant, 2019
Website / Social Links
Starting with familiar Islamic motifs that are reinterpreted from their origins, my large-scale sculptural installations create universally welcoming spaces through the interplay of light and shadow. With a conceptual basis generated out of my own experiences as a woman and person of color, my artwork reaches beyond the personal to explore often contradictory and culturally constructed binaries.”
