On February 6th and 7th, nearly 1,500 people came out for Imagine, South Asia at the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM). As part of PEM’s Present Tense Initiative, the museum hosted a range of dynamic weekend programming to celebrate the eight nations and more than 5,000 years of human history that comprise South Asia.

“South Asia penetrates almost every aspect of PEM,” said PEM Curator of South Asian Art Sona Datta. “It’s part of the DNA of this museum and so we’re taking a full weekend to look at the diversity of art, culture and people that make up this amazing region of the world.”

EXHIBITION

The region’s rich and diverse artistic heritage was explored through the unveiling of the award-winning contemporary exhibition Intersections by Anila Agha who was at the museum all weekend.

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. She has had solo exhibitions in the United States, United Arab Emirates and Pakistan. Residencies and awards include the Grand Prize at ArtPrize (2014). Agha is currently an associate professor of drawing at the Herron School of Art & Design at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis.

Intersections is an immersive single-room installation that conjures a cross-cultural intersection of Spain’s Alhambra Palace, a site where a thousand years ago Islamic and Christian traditions thrived in coexistence. A five-foot laser-cut steel cube at the center of the gallery casts patterned shadows that echo the filigree found at the Alhambra Palace in Granada, Spain, a historic structure that was cooperatively built in the 14th century by Muslim, Jewish and Christian artisans and represents the coexistence of the Western and Islamic worlds. A single light bulb centered in the cube creates the interplay of light and shadow across all of the gallery’s surfaces, as well as the viewer.

Growing up under the strict conventions of gender that inform Pakistani society, Agha felt excluded and cloistered at home, while her male peers enjoyed warmth and companionship inside Pakistan’s exclusively male mosques. Now living in America, Agha experiences new freedoms and, yet, a different kind of exclusion -- that of being a Muslim. This sense of alienation, and the desire to transcend it, informs every aspect of her work.

Agha’s installation at PEM presents an immersive meditation on the nature of boundaries, categorization and alienation, while evoking the power of that which is mutual and common to us all.  Crowds enjoyed the exhibition all weekend and even got to chat with the artist in the installation.

PROGRAMMING

The weekend also included a writing workshop with National Book Award finalist Carla Power, the U.S. premiere of the BBC documentary Treasures of the Indus and a dance party with renowned London DJ Ben “the Bee” Taylor and the UK arts collective House of Honey.

Audiences gathered for the U.S. premiere of the BBC documentary Treasures of the Indus, written and narrated by PEM Curator of South Asian Art Sona Datta. Pakistan Unveiled looks at the long, multi-faith narrative of the region’s past from the early cities in the Indus Valley, Pakistan’s rich Buddhist history to the garden city of Mughal Lahore. The second episode addresses at the story of the people of the Mughal Empire who melded their Persian heritage with the indigenous Rajput traditions of India to create an aesthetic that culminated in the impossible grandeur of the great Mughals. Introduced by Spike Geilinger (director and cameraman), the third and final episode of the series focuses on the development of Hinduism from the earliest rock-cut shrines to the great temple cities of Southern India.

On Saturday, in PEM’s East India Marine Hall, audiences enjoyed a concert put on by Jawwad Noor, disciple of Shahid Parvez Khan, as he performed a khayyal recital with sitar, accompanied on tabla by Nitin Mitta. A special artist-led tour took place on Saturday with Indian performance artist Mithu Sen who imaginatively explored the ideas of art and artifacts.

Saturday night, dancers gathered for a South Asian dance party with U.K. arts collective House of Honey as they presented a musical extravaganza with visuals in response to Anila Agha’s Intersections. Renowned DJ Ben "the Bee" Taylor's intoxicating mix of music inflected with South Asia's many musical traditions -- from traditional ragas and the ecstasy of Sufi poetry set to music to upbeat Bollywood rhythms.

On Sunday, a popular writing workshop on sacred spaces examined where Islam and the West can come together and where the traditional meets the modern, the secular touches the divine, the exclusion become understanding. National Book Award finalist Carla Power ( author of If The Oceans Were Ink: An Unlikely Friendship and a Journey to the Heart of the Quran) and Intersections artist Anila Agha led a conversation about bringing together opposing forces and inhabiting a sacred space. It was moderated by The Tannery Series, which is based in Newburyport. A book signing with Power followed the discussion.

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