Rooted in process and the act of making, Ayesha Sultana’s practice is an ongoing investigation of drawing, of seeing space in continuum, of exploring gaps in visual memory and of looking at the periphery and what is overlooked in plain sight.
In a constantly evolving process, Sultana’s work cannot be identified as belonging to a single artistic tendency. She concurrently works in different mediums and techniques, but with a specific interest in the features of materials she uses in the act of making. This leads to other ways of looking and engaging, in the relevance of formal properties of various materials and the depth of meaning of the medium itself. Having discarded the narrative, she often uses drawing as a verb, of 'doing' whether by cutting, folding, piercing, layering, recording, tracing, removing, scratching and so on.
An attempt to make visible or to delve into what one can see, and simultaneously translating the visual information, is what engages Sultana. Through the primacy of drawing and painting, this act of looking is to assimilate the experience of her surroundings and space.
Ayesha works with a range of materials to thread her practice, as she delves into deep modes of expression that cultivate attention as well as a way of looking, while she summates her urban surroundings that seem to be in a state of unending flux. Between monochromatic minimalism as well as robust colour she uses mediums ranging from acrylic and gesso on board, ink on tissue paper, clay coated paper, graphite on paper, acrylic on linen, teak, brass and powder coating, glass and glue, plaster and wire mesh, as well as linen and gesso.
Space to Sultana seems relational, a field emerging as a result of matter and its parts, in the movement or weight of its fragments, not necessarily marked by a beginning or an end but a structure or a space that never ends – the periphery.