Glasgow-based artist Aqsa Arif often works with printmaking as part an extended process of developing multi-layered sculptural and installation pieces, which have previously involved also performance, photography, embroidery, painting and other media.
During her residency at Edinburgh Printmakers, Aqsa embarked on a new project inspired by the Pakistani folk tales of the Seven Queens of Sindh, which saw the artist performing the role of one of these heroines as a means to delve into her own dual identity and bring her Pakistani heritage and current experiences into close contact. The artist describes this exploration as a healing process, closely connected to travelling as an act of survival.
Aqsa developed imagery for this work through screenprint and monotyping techniques initially, later experimenting with printing on the back of richly patterned fabrics, which draw our attention to what is hidden and overlooked. This meditative reworking of her own image, adding visual and textural layers at every stage, refences a poignant and honest investigation into her own identity and cultural backgrounds.
Aqsa Arif, Sohni ki Rath, aur Sohni ka Din (Sohni’s Night and Sohni’s Day), screenprint on woven textile, embroidery, wood, 2023. Detail.
Residency dates: 4th – 28th October 2022
Aqsa Arif is a Scottish-Pakistani interdisciplinary artist based in Glasgow. Her work incorporates the mediums of poetry, printmaking, installation and film to construct complex installations in which she explores the themes of dual heritage, migration and cultural dissonance. Using archetypal and folk narratives as a force of understanding and renewing the Self, she examines the effects on the psychological world. As a Pakistani refugee to Scotland, she has described her experience as a life with the split of two cultural identities. This polarity underpins her work and is manifested through her use of film. Printmaking also plays a significant role in her practice. By re-moulding its two-dimensional plane within her three-dimensional surreal world, she personifies the medium within her structures.
Since graduating from the Glasgow School of Art in 2019, Aqsa has exhibited her work in Gallery of Modern Art, Jupiter Artland, Royal Scottish Academy and Tate Modern and is currently an artist in residence at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum and Streetlevel Photoworks. She is also the co-founder of Salt Space Co-operative in Glasgow.
www.aqsaarif.com
@aqsa.arif.art
