Fragility Resilience Ayesha Sultana
Fragility and Resilience by Ayesha Sultana
25.08.2024
   Reading 3 min
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On 6 September 2024, Ishara Art Foundation will launch Fragility and Resilience, the first solo exhibition in the Gulf region by Bangladeshi artist Ayesha Sultana. Running until 7 December 2024, it delves into the delicate balance between the vulnerability and strength of our planet in the 21st century.

The show organised into three sections invites visitors on a journey of discovery and reflection. As one enters the gallery, they are greeted by Sultana’s hand-blown glass sculptures, which intimately connect with the human body through the glassblower’s breath, essential for shaping the final forms. These sculptures resemble droplets of water, transparent organs, or air bubbles, evoking a profound sense of life and fragility.

Ayesha Sultana__Pools (2024)
Ayesha Sultana, Pools (2024). Hand-blown glass, dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist.

Surrounding the sculptures are pieces from the Breath Count series (2018). Various marks are etched onto clay-coated paper, each synchronised with Sultana’s breaths during various moments in her life. This collection serves as a personal diary and a reflection of the collective struggle during the pandemic, where every breath simultaneously symbolised the sustenance of life and the potential for harm.

The Threshold series, also on display, pays tribute to Sultana’s father. It consists of photos taken by him in the 1980s and 1990s during his tenure as an officer in the Bangladesh Air Force across South Asia, the GCC, and the US, alongside photographs taken by Sultana during her own travels. The theme of holding onto memories in the face of erasure runs deep in these artworks.

Ayesha Sultana, Threshold Series (2013)
Ayesha Sultana, Detail of Threshold series (2012–13). Glue on scratched photograph, 8.6 x 12.7 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Experimenter. From the collection of Prateek and Priyanka Raja.

The next section of the show presents the Miasms and Inhabiting Our Bodies series of works, where Sultana uses tissue paper, a material embodying frailness, ephemerality, and fluidity. Through this medium, the artist creates works evoking skin and the sea. These pieces possess a quiet strength, speaking to the aesthetics of the body and the ecosystem prevailing despite the devastation.

The exhibition also features Sultana’s sketchbooks, diaries, artworks in progress, and an unfinished video. They reveal her careful planning, experimentation, and emotional depth that go into each completed piece, underscoring the fragility and resilience inherent in artistic creation.

To further enrich the visitor experience, Fragility and Resilience will be accompanied by a series of public programmes (artist talks, guided tours, and workshops) designed to deepen engagement with the exhibition’s themes.

About the artist

Ayesha Sultana (b. 1984, Jashore, Bangladesh), who resides in Lilburn (Georgia, USA), received her BFA (2007) and a post-graduate diploma in Art Education (2008) from Beaconhouse National University (Lahore, Pakistan). She is a member of Britto Arts Trust, an artist-run organisation in Dhaka (Bangladesh).

Ayesha Sultana, Inhabiting Our Bodies (2024)
Ayesha Sultana, Inhabiting Our Bodies (2024). Watercolour on Japanese silk tissue, 76.2 x 60.96 cm. Courtesy of the artist.

Sultana’s practice encompasses drawing, painting, and sculpture, using a variety of materials to explore the properties of form, space, and colour. Her graphite works, in particular, play with illusions of depth and solidity, blurring the lines between two-dimensional and three-dimensional space. The artist produces objects which often appear metallic and machine-made. They are rendered in tonal gradations of graphite, the paper shaped into three-dimensional forms.

The artist has showcased her creations in solo and group exhibitions across the globe, including the Dhaka Art Summit (2023); Artist’s Rooms (Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai, 2022); Art Basel (Switzerland, 2019); and the 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT9) (Queensland, Australia, 2018), to name a few. Sultana’s art pieces are part of such esteemed public collections as San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (San Francisco, USA), Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (New Delhi, India), and Tate Modern (London, UK), among the others.

To learn more about Fragility and Resilience, please go to the show’s official web page.

You might also be interested in visiting Immortal Mirror by Aref Montazeri.