DS-CDMC Lecture Series: Anila Quayyum Agha

Anila Quayyum Agha: An Embellished Life 

My journey as an artist – building a life as an immigrant woman of color – finding acceptance and an amplified voice through my art by using the oft disparaged textile/ fiber processes such as pattern, color, stitch work and embellishment, combined with light & shadows, to explore contradictions and commonalities between cultures and peoples of diverse backgrounds.

About the Speaker:
Anila Quayyum Agha‘s art practice explores perceived cultural and social polarities such as the masculine-feminine, public-private, definite-amorphous, and religious-secular, acting as a catalyst for her to delve into controversial topics that reflect upon topical themes of cultural identity, global politics, environmental concerns, mass media and social/gender roles. Mixing reflections and shadows with solid forms and often transposing the resulting affect, her artwork aspires simultaneously to be perceptually soothing and conceptually challenging.

Major solo shows include the Kew, Shirley Sherwood Galleries – Royal Botanical Gardens, in London, UK; Museum of Oriental Art, in Turin, Italy; The Bruce Museum in Greenwich, CT; Cummer Museum of Art, in Jacksonville, FL; Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, TX; Columbia Art Museum in South Carolina; Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA, National Sculpture Museum in Valladolid, Spain, The Dallas Contemporary Art Museum, Cincinnati Art Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Jacksonville, FL. Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, North Carolina Art Museum in Raleigh, and the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio. For the 2019 Venice Biennial, Agha was included in a collateral event, She Persists, with 22 contemporary feminist artists. Agha has received the NEA grant to support a traveling retrospective at the Westmoreland Museum of American Art in Greensburg, PA, for 2024. The retrospective Interwoven travels to Wichita Museum of Art and two other museums in 2025/26. Additional grants include the Efroymson Art Fellowship, Cincinnati Art Museum’s 2017 Schiele Prize, the DeHaan Artist of Distinction Award twice (2018 & 2021) and the Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors award in 2019. Agha’s 2014 ArtPrize entry, titled “Intersections”, earned the Public Vote Grand Prize and split the Juried Grand Prize in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She is the recipient of numerous grants from Indiana University like the New Frontiers Exploratory grant.

For her creative research, Agha, was awarded the highest research honor by Indiana University in 2016 titled Glenn W. Irwin Research Scholar Award. In 2020, Agha received an Endowed Chair position titled Morris Eminent Scholar in Art at Augusta University in Georgia, as well as the prestigious Smithsonian Fellowship in the arts for 2021 and worked with both SAAM and AAA in Washington DC in May 2022. In 2025, Agha attended Joan Mitchell Center Residency in New Orleans, LA. Her work has been collected by both institutions and private collectors; nationally and internationally.

This lecture is part of the DS-CDMC Lecture Series, an annual program offered through the Design Studies Department in co-sponsorship with the Nancy M. Bruce Center for Design and Material Culture. Twice each academic year, a scholar and/or maker in support of each of the three design studies majors is invited to campus to present a public lecture. In conjunction with their lecture, they visit classes within the Design Studies Department, meet with faculty and students, and may host workshops for students connected to their practice.

Agha’s visit is co-sponsored with generous support from the Division of the Arts and the International Division as part of the International Visiting Artist Program.