Frist Art Museum to Present ANILA QUAYYUM AGHA: INTERWOVEN Starting May 2026
Organized by The Westmoreland Museum of American Art, the exhibition will run in the Gordon Contemporary Artists Project Gallery/
The Frist Art Museum will present Anila Quayyum Agha: Interwoven, an exhibition spanning two decades of the Pakistani American artist's multifaceted practice. Interwoven features mesmerizing installations, drawings, and sculptures that address some of the most urgent issues of our time. Organized by The Westmoreland Museum of American Art, the exhibition will be on view in the Frist's Gordon Contemporary Artists Project Gallery from May 22 through August 30, 2026-the final stop on a four-venue tour.
Born in Lahore in 1965, Agha moved to the United States in 1999 and now resides in Indianapolis. Her experiences as a woman and an immigrant dealing with discrimination, invisibility, and oppression inform her art, as does environmental devastation. "I do not have a single story," Agha says. "I have multiple stories that become interwoven to create a tapestry that is colorful, that is varied, that has pattern, that has beauty and light." Her wide-ranging influences include the California Light and Space movement, Indo-Islamic architecture, Urdu poetry, and traditional crafts such as embroidery.
Interwoven opens with works created between 2004, her final year of graduate school, and 2011. Agha's 2011 trip to the Alhambra proved to be a major turning point in her career. Christian, Jewish, and Muslim artists collaborated on the palace's realization, and today anyone can visit it.
A centerpiece of this exhibition, All the Flowers Are for Me (Red), a lightbox belonging to the Cincinnati Art Museum, abounds with references to Pakistani cultural traditions. Making its debut in red in Interwoven is another powerful installation, A Flood of Tears (Gathering Storms), a work that emphasizes human interconnectedness and our duty to one another. Light shines on hundreds of hanging threads and sharp needles. Evoking rainfall, the installation commemorates the devastating 2010 flood in Pakistan that affected 20 million people. Climate change, Agha notes, is unequal in its impact, affecting poor nations more than the wealthy ones mostly responsible for the greenhouse gas emissions causing the problem.
The exhibition A Beautiful Despair: Anila Quayyum Agha will be on view concurrently at the Huntsville Museum of Art through August 23. Members of both the Frist Art Museum and the Huntsville Museum of Art will receive reciprocal admission through each museum's respective exhibition dates.
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