Shadow of Time: Anila Quayyum Agha

Artist Anila Quayyum Agha uses simple elements—light, shadow, space, and pattern—to create communal experiences of beauty and wonder. This exhibition brings together recent sculptural works and drawings, featuring a large-scale installation that fills the gallery and envelops the viewer in illuminated patterns. Inspired by her personal history as a woman and an immigrant, Agha’s work raises questions about gender bias, exclusion, and displacement. She transforms these barriers, traditionally used to separate people, into art that brings them together. Growing up in her native Pakistan, Agha became familiar with the decorative patterns used in Islamic art, and now bases much of her work on them. She combines these patterns with simple, geometric shapes in large-scale installations and works on paper to create thought-provoking art that is both powerful and delicate, minimal and richly decorative.

Shadow of Time is presented with generous support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, and donors to Philbrook’s Exhibition Series.