Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art

About this Work

Born in Lahore, Pakistan, Anila Agha studied fiber arts at the University of North Texas before joining the faculty of the Herron School of Art and Design, IUPUI. Agha’s early work combined drawing, ink, beading, and stitching on paper. These abstract compositions challenged the relegation of craft beneath so-called “fine art” because of its association with femininity, a bias Agha found in both Pakistan and the United States. She now makes sculpture and large-scale installations that draw upon the traditional decorative patterns associated with Islam. The vegetal patterns in this work were adopted by Muslims from earlier motifs of the Byzantine Mediterranean and Sasanian Iran. In this way, Agha’s contemporary interpretations consider how all artistic traditions are hybrids of earlier cultures.