Toledo Museum of Art illuminates a world between light and dark

Pakistani-born artist explores boundaries of shadow in new exhibit.

By Roberta Gedert / The Blade
Sat, 12 Oct 2019 12:00:00 GMT

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Anila Quayyum Agha’s large-scale sculptural installations are best seen through the eyes of anonymity.

In her upcoming local exhibition Anila Quayyum Agha: Between Light and Shadow, the Pakistan-born American immigrant uses life experiences, coupled with light and shadow within space to both connect and recognize social, religious, and cultural barriers. The show opens Saturday in three gallery rooms at the Toledo Museum of Art.

“The artwork turns the space that it is existing in into the artwork so anyone who walks through it becomes part of the artwork, so everyone is precious. And because of the shadows falling on people’s faces, they become slightly anonymous,” said the studio artist, also an associate professor at the Herron School of Art and Design in Indianapolis.

“You are no longer white or black or yellow or green. You are kind of one human race. If you want to communicate in that moment where you are open to other cultures because you are confronting a beautiful environment, I think it opens you up to a way of being that takes fear out of you.”

The three pieces, Intersections, The Greys In Between and This Is Not a Refuge 2, are lacquered wood and metal sculptures between 6 feet and 18 feet in height or depth, but their intricate lace-like patterns throw shadows across an entire room to create what Agha calls “a communal space of peace and tranquility.” Galleries 4, 5, and 9 at TMA have been dedicated solely to the pieces and the sensory involvement they offer.

“We have been thinking a lot in terms of bringing work to the museum that is something that people can really have an experience with, different than the traditional walk through the museum galleries,” said Diane Wright, curator of glass and decorative arts at TMA. “Everyone who walks into the room will have a rather unique experience depending on how they move around the work.”

A room in Anila Quayyum Agha: Between Light and Shadow.

Wright co-curated the show with Lauren Applebaum, TMA’s Leadership Fellow. It will remain open to the general public through Feb. 9, and includes a talk by Agha the day it opens, as well as a professional development workshop for educators in which art and math teachers can meet Agha, tour the show, and work on a 3D project.

Agha grew up in Lahore, Pakistan, and was sent away to boarding school in the mountains at a young age. A sixth-grade teacher made note of her artistic ability, and having never forgotten that, Agha later applied for and was accepted at the only art school in the area, National College of Arts, Lahore.

Although painting was her main interest, Agha made a promise to her mother that she would pursue textiles, as Pakistan was a cotton-producing country that would offer employment opportunities as a backup plan.

During her college years, Agha participated in protests against the Pakistani dictatorship’s enforcement of laws that encouraged gender and religious intolerance. She endured the unwanted, gropings of men on the buses she used to transport her to school and then later for work in the public sector.

“Those were the times I started realizing early in my adolescence that public space was really dangerous in places like that,” she said of her experiences with public transportation.

After working in Pakistan for about eight years, Agha emigrated to the United States in 1999 with her husband, artist Steve Prachyl, an American citizen, and pursued her master of fine arts at the University of North Texas. There, in the middle of a group of students and staff that lacked ethnic diversity, she created smaller-scale drawings and paintings with stitching, and soft sculptures with velvet, silk and other materials.

Agha said although it was often disregarded or misunderstood during her education, she was determined to create work that referenced the cultural, societal and gender conflicts she experienced in her life. Her goal, she explained, was artwork that opened up the lines of communication between people.

“She's talking about the experience of inclusion and exclusion primarily, either based on your experience as a woman, your experience in a particular country, someone who is born there, somebody who is not born there,” Wright said. “She has experienced inclusion and exclusion in a number of different ways, and that's what she is referencing in these pieces.”

After accepting a position with Herron, Agha sought grant funding there that allowed her to pursue work on a larger scale. She traveled to Spain to visit the Alhambra palace, and studied both the patterns in the ancient Islamic architecture, and the reactions from the people around her.

“I saw this look of awe on people’s faces and people were talking in whispers and it was such a sublime experience and I thought I want to do this to people’s faces,” she said. “I came back to the studio after my trip and started cutting up patterns the way I visualized it and started putting light through it. The shadows I had been playing with on flat surfaces started becoming bigger and kind of started taking over.”

Inspired by the beauty of the sacred spaces, she created Intersections, a piece that won her top honors with both jurors and the general public at the 2014 ArtPrize international competition in Grand Rapids, Mich., in 2014.

“My work is not about religion, Islam or Christianity; it’s more about the contemplation of the nature of boundaries, like how we alienate certain people … the barriers we put up within race or religious entities or color or background or social classism,” she said.

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