Delicate Hope

Anila Quayyum Agha’s A Beautiful Despair mounts at the Carter.

The Amon Carter Museum of American Art (the Carter) will present Anila Quayyum Agha: A Beautiful Despair by the multidisciplinary Pakistan-born, US-based artistopening September 25, 2021.

Known for her large sculptural installations, Agha received her MFA from the University of North Texas and presented Intersections, a solo show at Dallas Contemporary in 2016, featuring a hanging metal armature with a single light that cast immersive shadows throughout the exhibition space. 

For the Carter, a dozen intricate new works from sculpture to works on paper reveal the artist’s latest evolution of her multi-award-winning practice. “Anila presents us with abstractions that explore the nature and meaning of boundaries and provokes contemplation and meditation,” said Shirley Reece-Hughes, curator of paintings, sculpture, and works on paper at the Carter.

Site-specific, A Beautiful Despair pairs two light bulbs as a single light source that illuminates the blue-lacquered interior of the lantern-like armature. Shadows cast through Agha’s meticulous ornate patterns are informed by art and architecture from her Pakistani heritage. However, the exhibition responds to the historic global crisis of 2020 and 2021. 

“The pandemic has created a deep loss across the world,” states Anila Quayyum Agha. Referencing the recent turmoil in Afghanistan and climate change issues, she adds: “It pains me to see that we as human beings have come to a certain point in civilization where we are so advanced and yet we can’t come together to deal with the situations.” Of the title A Beautiful Despair the artist describes, “I wanted to create a healing environment where the colors talk about that a little for the world. What is it that we are looking for when we come out of the pandemic? There is going to be despair all around us but there’s also hope. I wanted to deal with that idea of the precipice where if you fall this way there is deep despair but if you fall this way there is hope. It’s happening simultaneously.”

Like A Beautiful Despair, a delicate balance of light and shadow, Agha offers, “Hope is really delicate. You can just blow on it and it goes away.” 

Eschewing cultural and geographic boundaries, Agha mines patterns, materials, and symbols from her Pakistani heritage to create meditative environments for reflection in an inclusive space that promotes authentic conversations.

The second sculpture commission, Liminal Space (2021), for the Amon Carter continues to address the trauma brought on by the pandemic and civil unrest across the US. This is Agha’s first diamond-shaped hanging relief sculpture. The diamond serves as a gesture of mourning and hope that extends the duality of alienation and belonging that have defined her migrant experience—a persisting theme in her work.

“I wanted the sculptures to be so delicate, and yet they weigh a lot. The delicacy versus the weight as being really central to my work… Dark against the light. Light versus death. I’m really interested in all these things,” Anila Quayyum Agha says in a press preview.

A corresponding series of contemporary works on paper recall the traditions of female handiwork, such as sublime intricate embroidery and the incorporation of textile treatments including wax and dyes repositioning the historic laborious work of her native country. Marble-like patterns in red, gold, and white allude to sacred spaces and practices surrounding death. “Inhabiting paper as a spatial medium, her intricately patterned drawings work in concert with her visionary sculptures to inspire long periods of looking that manifest an interactive experience for the viewer. In reinventing traditional modes of works on paper, Agha realizes new domains for her havens of tranquility,” Reece-Hughes offers.

“Continuing the Carter’s celebration of the complex stories and diverse voices that define American creativity, Anila Quayyum Agha: A Beautiful Despair shares the unique insight of a transnational artist,” said Andrew J. Walker, Executive Director. “While pushing the physical boundaries of her medium, Agha provides contemporary audiences with a vehicle for processing their lived experiences and documents this pivotal chapter in American history for future generations. This timely presentation illustrates the importance of the Carter’s ongoing work to showcase and propel conversations in American art today.” 

Anila Quayyum Agha: A Beautiful Despair will be on view January 9, 2022.