AT THE CIRCLE'S CENTER
Aisha Khalid
Anant Art Gallery, 2019
Catalogue essay: Kavita Singh
“Every work of Aisha Khalid’s contains a quiet act of subversion. Things that appear at first to be demurely decorative on prolonged viewing reveal small details -- an irregularity in the surface, an interruption of a texture, a prickliness on the underside of a garment -- that grow in significance and become profound disruptions that entirely shift the meaning of the work.”
‘AT THE CIRCLE'S CENTER’ explored Aisha Khalid’s successful attempt at redefining the meaning of Op Art by blending it with Islamicate tiling patterns and further subjugating it to her own pictorial explorations. The exhibition showcased patterned circles, juxtaposed against a patterned ground, that on a closer look revealed the rippling edges of a garment’s hem attesting the presence of the “Orient” in the history of abstraction in art. These works can be seen as an extension of her earlier paintings which had burqa-clad figures hidden in a field of geometric motifs that commented on the complicated societal systems which protect and repress women at the same time.
(excerpt from the catalogue essay ‘AT THE CIRCLE'S CENTER’ by Kavita Singh)