Anila Quayyum Agha: Let One Bird Sing

“Give some tree the gift of green again. Let one bird sing.”

Echoing the lines of Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s poem, Ek Din Yun Khizan Aa Gai (When Autumn Came), in this solo exhibition Anila Agha addresses the violence and destruction of natural environments such as plants, trees, and entire ecosystems. In Faiz’s poem, the birds are a metaphor for the human condition and for the continual alienation of marginalized communities—their dreams disintegrating; their voices withering in their throats. Here, injustice perpetuated against the land stands in for the oppression of man.

In a similar vein, the centerpiece of this exhibition is a laser-cut steel cube, Rainforest. The piece, which is its own room within a room, portrays a lush, tropical, and immersive environment. A rainforest is typically cacophonous with the sound of many animals and birds. With the immediate threat of rainforest deforestation and the loss of avian habitats, birds are in the process of being silenced.

Agha’s work, like Faiz’s poetry, has a multiplicity of meaning. She probes through layered geometric, floral, and abstract patterns that are ambiguous and contain many interpretations. Agha’s art is often translated through her relationship with Islamic and Islamicate art. The glowing light of her work can activate a mystical or religious atmosphere. And yet, Agha cannot be reduced to a simple black-and-white reading, as there are literal and metaphorical gradations of grey cast in the shadows of her works.

The last line of Faiz’s poem pleads for a spring renewal—for birds to sing and trees to be green. The poet invokes and commands change. This theme of hope is at the core of Agha’s work. While the environment may be stripped bare and viewers may feel dispirited, Agha evokes a world of enchantment, with moments of intimacy between viewers and tender encounters with light. The artist propels us to make promises for a better future through these communal moments.

Let us make a covenant to gift at least one bird their voice again.

About the Artist

Anila Quayyum Agha was born in Lahore, Pakistan in 1965. She received her BFA from the National College of Arts, Lahore, and an MFA in Fiber Arts from the University of North Texas in 2001. Agha resided in Texas for eight years, from 2000 to 2008. Major awards include the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant (2019), the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship (2021), and the Joan Mitchell Center Residency in New Orleans, LA (2025). For the 2019 Venice Biennial, Agha was included in a collateral event, She Persists, with 22 contemporary feminist artists. Agha’s work is in many private and public collections, including the Cincinnati Art Museum in Ohio, Kiran Nader Art Museum in Delhi, Kunsthaus Zurich in Switzerland, and the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA.

Agha works in a cross-disciplinary fashion with mixed media, creating artwork that explores global and environmental politics, cultural multiplicity, and social and gender roles in our current cultural and global scenario. As a result, her artwork is conceptually challenging, producing complicated weaves of thought, artistic action, and social experience.