Seattle
Anila Quayyum Agha’s “Geometry of Light” (on view through April 19, 2026) has transformed Seattle’s Asian Art Museum into an immersive, sacred space. But the mesmeric work of the Lahore-born, Indianapolis-based artist is also subtly subversive. Her suspended and standing steel forms, laser-cut with intricate designs that project geometric shadows onto visitors and their surroundings, bring viewers into the inner sanctum of Islamic design. Employing the traditional art of mashrabiya—wooden lattice screens that diffuse light and cast intricate patterns—her installations enfold and implicate us in a Muslim space, at once intimate and communal.
In the present political climate, that alone is a daring gesture. But Agha, in an artist’s statement, says that her intent is also to transform the “typically masculine material” of steel and reclaim “the stereotype that delicate or feminine work is inferior.” By re-creating patterns and designs found in South Asian shrines, tombs, mosques, and palaces and literally projecting them onto viewers, she democratizes motifs that have often been employed in spaces marked by gendered and class-based divisions—arguably more in the spirit of Islam’s original intent than what it has become.
“Geometry of Light” spans three galleries. The first is dominated by the laser-cut steel sheet of Liminal Space (2021), hung against a yellow wall, and its display of delicate, repeated shadow play. The surrounding walls display five paper/collage works, including Of Love and Other Stories (2023). The combination of cut paper, embroidery, and beads lends an intricate textural quality that reads like Islamic braille, offering a micro to the macro of the larger installations. Warhead II (2023), another mixed-media work employing cut paper, Mylar, encaustic, embroidery, and beads suggests the delicacy of Islamic tile work and the precision of drones.
A Beautiful Despair (Blue) (2021), a three-dimensional cube of lacquered steel enclosing a halogen bulb, hangs alone in the second gallery, where it plays effectively with color and scale, contrasting a geometrically designed inner sanctum infused with blue against red and yellow walls that multiply and enlarge the motif. The third gallery houses This is Not A Refuge! (2) (2019), a floor-based, laser-cut, resin-coated work made of aluminum with a light bulb within. The simplified frame of a house suggests a trap, inferring the violence of domesticity, asylum, and organized religion, but offering a way out via transcendent illumination.
By revisiting and reinterpreting these traditional methods and motifs, Agha offers an Islamicized embrace to an American public often obsessed with “terrorist” fantasies that ignore the rich cultural legacy of a 1,200-year-old faith practiced by over a billion people. Her “magic lanterns” slyly insert sheer beauty into tired old tropes, inviting viewers to participate in and absorb their glory. When images of the “Muslim world” present non-stop dehumanized violence, Agha’s works offer a light- and color-soaked balm for the soul.
