Anila Quayyum Agha (b. 1965) is a Pakistani-American artist who works in a cross-disciplinary fashion with mixed media. She creates artwork that explores global politics, cultural multiplicity, mass media, and social and gender roles in our current cultural and global scenario. As a result, her artwork is conceptually challenging, interweaving thought, artistic action and social experience. Agha is perhaps best known for her immersive, large-scale light installations in which she laser-cuts elaborate patterns into three-dimensional cubes.
Agha’s work has been exhibited in numerous exhibitions including at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Jacksonville, Florida; the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts; Grand Rapids Art Museum, Michigan; Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio; National Sculpture Museum, Valladolid, Spain; and Dallas Contemporary Art Museum, Texas. Major awards include the Efroymson Contemporary Arts Fellowship, ArtPrize (Juried and Public Vote Grand Prize 2014), Creative Renewal Fellowship and DeHaan Artist of Distinction (Indy Arts Council), Research Scholar Award (Indiana University), Schiele Prize (Cincinnati Art Museum) and the 2019 Painters and Sculptors Grant from the Joan Mitchell Foundation. For the 2019 Venice Biennale, Agha was included in the collateral event She Persists. Her work has been collected by institutions and private collectors nationally and internationally.
