anila quayyum agha
Document Actions
biography
Anila Quayyum Agha was born and raised in Lahore, Pakistan, where she completed her BFA in Textile Arts in 1991. Having relocated to Dallas, TX in 2000 she attended the University of North Texas and completed her MFA in Fiber Arts in 2004.
Agha has an extensive exhibition record here in the USA and has won numerous awards for her artwork, such as the Fort Worth Dealers Association Award, for her participation in Art in the Metroplex. Recently Agha received a CICF- Efroymson Foundation Travel Grant, and the New Frontiers Travel Grant for a research trip to Pakistan for 2009.
Agha was an Artist in Resident at the Center for Contemporary Craft, Houston, TX and taught for three years at the college/ University level in Houston, TX. Currently she is the Assistant professor of Drawing at The Herron School of Art and Design in Indianapolis, IN.
Agha works with mixed media; creating artwork that explores and comments on global politics, mass media, and social and gender roles in our current cultural and global scenario. As a result her artwork is conceptually challenging, producing more complicated weaves of thought, artistic action and social experience.
Douglas Britt in his short review in the Houston Chronicle said the following about Agha’s work during her second solo show at Joanwich Art gallery, Houston, TX during the summer of 2008.
June 25, 2008, 1:33PM
Last call for these area art exhibits
By DOUGLAS BRITT
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle TOOLS
When Words Aren't Enough
At Joanwich & Co., Pakistan-born and Houston-based artist Anila Quayyum Agha presents When Words Aren't Enough, a mysterious, exquisite body of works on paper in which writing and embroidery serve as the primary modes of drawing.
Most of the pieces feature stanzas by the Urdu poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz, with English translations or paraphrases available alongside the exhibition checklists.
Sometimes the poems' letters are sewn with golden thread onto the paper; in other cases, they're cut out.
Dyes, stains and beads join collaged or transferred headlines or excerpts from newspaper articles to create images that evoke antique manuscripts but reference contemporary events, specifically the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The juxtaposition of embroidery, which typically is seen as women's work, with news of warfare and the words of a male poet, hints at further political undertones in these seductive, unsettling works.
