February 2, 2014 at 2:05 pm

Picture of the Day: The Shadow Cube

by twistedsifter

 

THE SHADOW CUBE

 

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shadow cube light installation art interesctions by anila quayyum agha (1)

Artwork by ANILA QUAYYUM AGHA
Website | See.me | Indiana U. Profile | Facebook

 

In this amazing light and shadow installation by Anila Quayyum Agha, we see a large-scale patterned wood cube with an interior light source that projects brilliant shadow patterns on the surrounding walls.

Entitled Intersections (6.5′ cube, projected shadows: 35’x32′), the artwork has been selected as a finalist for the 3rd Annual See.Me: Year in Review Competition. On the artwork’s description page, Agha explains:

With this large scale patterned wood project I explored intersections of culture and religion, the dynamics and interpretation of space and sight as it threaded through cultures and emerged as varied expressions that redefine themselves with the passage of time. In this piece, a motif that is believed to represent certitude is explored to reveal its fluidity i.e. the geometrical patterning in Islamic sacred spaces. This project is meant to uncover the contradictory nature of all intersections; which are simultaneously boundaries and also points of meeting.
 
The Intersections project takes the seminal experience of exclusion as a woman from a space of community and creativity such as a Mosque and translates the complex expressions of both wonder and exclusion that have been my experience while growing up in Pakistan. The wooden frieze emulates a pattern from the Alhambra, which was poised at the intersection of history, culture and art and was a place where Islamic and Western discourses, met and co-existed in harmony and served as a testament to the symbiosis of difference. I have given substance to this mutualism with the installation project exploring the binaries of public and private, light and shadow, and static and dynamic. This installation project relies on the purity and inner symmetry of geometric design, the interpretation of the cast shadows and the viewer’s presence with in a public space.

 

Anila Quayyum Agha was born in Lahore, Pakistan. She has an MFA in Fiber Arts from the University of North Texas and her work has been exhibited in over twelve solo shows and 40 group shows. In 2005, Agha was an Artist in Resident at the Center for Contemporary Craft, Houston. In 2008 she relocated to Indianapolis to teach Drawing at the Herron School of Art in Indianapolis. Agha works in a cross disciplinary fashion with mixed media; creating artwork that explores global politics, cultural multiplicity, mass media, and social and gender roles in our current cultural and global scenario.

 

 

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