Mennello Museum immerses visitors in ‘Flourishing Patterns’ from Pakistani-American artist
What guests see when they enter the Mennello Museum of American Art are beautiful, precisely cut cubes and metal shapes that cast shadows onto the wall. While these works are stunning on their own, they are meant to create a dialogue between the rigid barriers of religion, politics and social rules and the nuanced layers that often get left out of such conversations.
“Flourishing Patterns,” an exhibition on display through Sept. 24, presents recent works by Pakistani-American artist Anila Quayyum Agha, who has become known for her installations of intricate laser-cut cubes.
Agha’s artistic creations have their roots in the traditions she observed in her childhood in Pakistan.
“The framework started with domestic women’s work and labor. That’s where she learned sewing and embroidery and pattern work,” said Shannon Fitzgerald, the museum’s executive director. “Her degree was in textiles. I think she’s interested in elevating the craft and women’s work.”
In one room, guests can see several framed works featuring elaborate hand-cut paper designs that incorporate embroidery and beads. These were made as a meditation on the space between visibility and invisibility or what’s real and unreal.
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In the museum’s main foyer, four wall-mounted cubes cast shadows on the wall, revealing a juxtaposition between the hard steel and the soft overlapping shadows. The artist draws inspiration from arabesque patterns and Islamic design.
Agha uses her work as a way to promote an open exchange of culture, religion and ideas, reflecting on the barriers that are blurred by time, space and experience.
“She addresses the geopolitical lines of Christianity, Judaism and Islam,” Fitzgerald said. “There’s conflict within all of them and beautiful moments in all of them. At different times, there was peace.”
On an adjacent wall, “Flight of a Thousand Birds” shows a stainless-steel sculpture that projects the silhouette of many avian figures onto the wall. This piece reflects on migration and borderless movement, which Agha relates to as someone who moved to the United States from Pakistan more than 20 years ago.
The pinnacle of the exhibition is “Crossing Boundaries,” one of Agha’s signature installations that takes up an entire room and contemplates the barriers of “gender, race, religion and culture that prevent the true intersections and exchange between cultures,” states the accompanying information. In Pakistan, she was alienated from publicly participating in mosques and has felt hostility as a woman and an immigrant.
“It has an awe factor,” Fitzgerald said after stepping into the room, which is filled with patterned shadows.
This piece was inspired by the architectural windows of the Alhambra, a palace in Granada, Spain, although the artwork’s light flows outward from within the cube rather than inward through windows.
“Flourishing Patterns” aims to “address the multifaceted experiences of womanhood, immigration and cultural multiplicity,” the museum’s notes indicate, in turn creating dialogue about the junction of “identity, gender and social justice.” Agha’s work suggests that social divisions are often much more nuanced, layered and changing than the black-and-white binaries they’re made out to be.
If you go: “Anila Quayyum Agha: Flourishing Patterns” is on display through Sept. 24 at the Mennello Museum, 900 E. Princeton St. in Orlando. The museum is open 10:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday and noon-4:30 p.m. Sunday. Admission is $5 per adult, $4 per senior ages 60 and older, and $1 for students (with ID) and children ages 6-17. Children younger than age 6, veterans, active and retired military (with ID) enter for free. For more information, go to mennellomuseum.org.
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