Fragility and Resilience by multidisciplinary artist Ayesha Sultana was an exhibition of a diverse collection of artworks at Ishara Art Foundation, that explored the delicate balance between the vulnerability and strength of our planet today. A Bangladeshi-born, US-based artist, this was Ayesha’s first comprehensive solo show in the GCC.
We sat down with Sabih Ahmed, Director at Ishara Art Foundation to get an insight into the exhibition’s thematic underpinnings and its relevance in today’s world, where social, ecological, and personal upheavals test the limits of sustainability.
Sabih’s work at the Foundation focuses on modern and contemporary art of South Asia mapped through diverse itineraries and inter-disciplinary formations. In this chat, Sabih delves into the vision, research, creative process, and the works that were included in the show, as well as the final output and its impact on the viewers.
Saira Malik (S.M.): What inspired the theme of Fragility and Resilience, and what did it explore?
Sabih Ahmed (S.A): As with all exhibitions we organize at Ishara, Fragility and Resilience drew its inspiration from questions that artistic practice raises about our times. With this exhibition, Ishara had the opportunity to touch on the subject that is both singular to each of our lives, and yet shared more widely, namely, to find strength in vulnerability. Having followed Ayesha Sultana’s practice over the years and then starting conversations with her, we discovered how her practice creates a delicate balance between the fragility and resilience that is experienced on an individual level as well as on a planetary scale. She was able to convey this through the medium and techniques she employs in her work that challenge the conventional binaries that separate the fragile and the durable.
(S.M.): Why is this thematic exploration particularly important right now?
(S.A): This exploration feels particularly pertinent in the contemporary world especially since the pandemic, as social, ecological, and personal upheavals continually test the limits of sustainability.
(S.M.): Can you walk us through the exhibition and how the works reflected the concepts of Fragility and Resilience?
(S.A.): The exhibition was divided into three sections, each gently transitioning into the other. The first section was dedicated to the ebbs and flows of memories and breath. It included Sultana’s ‘Breath Count’ series that commenced in 2018, where she etched out lines and marks on clay-coated paper, keeping time with her breath during different moments in her life. Creating an intimate diary of her breath, the work served as a performative score capturing the strained experience shared by humanity since the onset of the pandemic, where every breath was both precious for sustaining life and a threat to others. Interwoven with ‘Breath Count’ were works from Sultana’s ‘Threshold’ series, which commemorate her father’s passing in 2008. The series consisted of photographs taken by him in the 1980s and 1990s during his assignments as an officer of the Bangladesh Air Force in South Asia, the GCC, and the US, along with photographs Sultana took during her own travels in later years.
Holding onto the image in the face of erasure becomes a central theme in these works. In the centre of this space were a set of hand-blown glass sculptures titled ‘Pools’ placed on a raised platform. Each work in the series had a deep connection with the human body, as it required the glassblower’s breath to give it its final form. The process of creating these sculptures embodied the tension between brittleness and strength. With their organic forms, the sculptures resembled droplets of water, transparent organs, or bubbles of air that may burst upon the slightest touch. In the same space, we also presented two of Ayesha’s paintings of seascapes, reminding us that breathing is not merely a biological necessity but an ecological reality. In that sense, the breath renders all living things porous and permeable to one another.
The second section of the exhibition was dedicated to surfaces and skins. Tissues in Sultana’s practice were a poignant choice of medium, epitomizing frailness, ephemerality, and fluidity. Tissue paper, with its delicate and translucent nature, is easily torn, damaged, dissolved, and dispersed. However, Sultana transformed this tenuous medium into a vehicle for artistic expression evoking both skin and the turbulence of the sea. In the tradition of feminist art practices, these abstract works were reminders of stains, pools of fluid, blood clots, and microscopic nuclei—all life-affirming. The resulting works possessed a quiet strength, speaking to an aesthetics of the body and the ecosystem that prevails despite devastation. Works such as ‘Miasms’ and ‘Inhabiting Our Bodies’ series captured this most delicately yet intensely. This section also included oil paintings and a set of water colours that reminded you of the sky.
The third and final section of the exhibition was an anatomy of Ayesha’s studio to offer a glimpse into the process behind her art making.
(S.M.): What was the significance of the last part of the exhibition where viewers are given an intimate insight into Ayesha Sultana’s creative process through unfinished works and materials from her studio?
(S.A.): As an art foundation, we always find it important to delve deeper into an artist’s practice beyond just the finished artwork. Ayesha’s sketchbooks, diaries, in-progress artworks, and a rare video dating back to 2009 allowed us the opportunity to share something behind the scenes. Arranged on 3 tables across Ishara’s mezzanine, these documents and artifacts offered a rare and intimate glimpse into her artistic process. They revealed the meticulous planning, experimentation, and emotional investment underlying each finished piece, highlighting the fragility and resilience inherent in all creative acts. In the context of this exhibition, the material served as a testament to the artist’s willingness to embrace the unknown and the incomplete.
(S.M.): Sultana is best known for her graphite on paper works that create the illusion of corrugated sheets of metal. What was behind the decision to exclude them from the exhibition?
(S.A.): When our team at Ishara decided that we would be working with Ayesha, we knew from the outset that we wanted the exhibition to surprise even those visitors who were familiar with Ayesha’s works. Her graphite on paper works have been widely exhibited around the world. So, it felt like a timely moment to present other facets of her practice and offer a deep reading of the themes that underpin her thought-process. We have nevertheless presented a deconstructed version of her graphite works on the mezzanine, to invite viewers to see the complex construction of form that goes into those compositions.
(S.M.): Fragility and Resilience marks the first time that Ishara has presented an exhibition solely focused on abstraction. Why was it important to introduce an abstract exhibition?
(S.A.): There is a long history of abstract art in West Asia, that draws from century-old traditions of geometry and calligraphy, as well as from Western clichés of Orientalism and decorative patterns. At Ishara, we were interested to explore how contemporary artists open new ways of thinking about abstraction that complicate the narrative of abstraction both in Western Art History as well as its Non-western counterparts. In Ayesha’s work, we found this manifesting through what my colleagues and I at the Foundation refer to as ‘corporeal abstraction’, i.e., abstract forms that emerge from the body’s sensations. ‘How do we draw breath’ is at once an artistic question as much as it is a sensorial question of drawing-in breath. This changed how we think about abstraction as not being the opposite of representation or as beyond language, but rather as a language of its own. In essence, this exhibition was an opportunity to represent the body without a figure.
(S.M.): What do you hope audiences took away from Fragility and Resilience?
(S.A.): When you walked around the exhibition, you found around 200 art objects. However, the show was in fact composed of only 9 bodies of work. This is because Ayesha works on series and projects that span several years. The ‘Breath Count’ series for instance was started in 2018 and continued into 2024. This opened a rare window into seeing artworks not as individual art-objects but as projects that stretch over time. I hope that visitors who saw the show took away a different understanding of contemporary art which is not unique to Ayesha alone, that an artwork can be a journey unfolding over a long duration of time in the ecosystems we live in.
AYESHA SULTANA: FRAGILITY AND RESILIENCE was on display at Ishara Art Foundation in Al Serkal Avenue from 6th September – 7th December 2024
