Deep Dive | Ayesha Sultana

Ayesha Sultana (b. 1984, Jessore, Bangladesh) completed her Bachelors in Fine Art (2007) and a Post-Graduate Diploma in Art Education (2008) from Beaconhouse National University, Lahore, where she also taught for two years. Recent solo and group exhibitions include Bare Bones, Experimenter, Kolkata (2021),Pulse, Experimenter, Kolkata (2020); Seismic Movements, Dhaka Art Summit, Dhaka (2020); Lines, Beats and Shadows, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi (2020); Art Basel, Basel (2019); Searching for Stars Amongst the Crescents, Experimenter, Kolkata (2019) New Configurations, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi (2019); Lahore Biennale 01, Mubarak Haveli, Lahore; Planetary Planning, Dhaka Art Summit, Dhaka (2018); FIAC, Paris; Making Visible, Experimenter, Kolkata (2017); The Space Between Things, Dhaka Art Summit, Dhaka (2016); welcome to what we took from is the state, Queens Museum, New York, NY (2016); 11th Gwangju Biennale, South Korea (2016); You Cannot Cross the Sea Merely by Staring at the Waves, Krinzinger Projekte, Vienna (2016); Immateriality in Residue, Experimenter, Kolkata; Approaching Abstraction, Jhaveri Contemporary, Mumbai; 1mile2 Dhaka, Shyam Bazaar, Dhaka (2015); Ethereal, Leila Heller Gallery, New York; The Language of Human Consciousness, Athr Gallery, Jeddah; Blue Velvet, Galleria Valentina Bonomo, Rome; Outside the Field of View, Experimenter, Kolkata; B/Desh, Dhaka Art Summit, Dhaka; Cross-Casting, Britto Space, Dhaka (2014). Sultana’s works are in the collection of SFMoMA; KNMA, New Delhi; Devi Art Foundation, Delhi; X Museum, Beijing; Samdani Art Foundation; Tate Modern, London; amongst others.

Murtaza Vali is a critic, curator and art historian based in Sharjah and Brooklyn. His ongoing research interests include materialist art histories, ex-centric minimalisms, ghosts and other figures of liminal subjectivities and repressed histories, the weight of color and contemporary art of the Indian Ocean littoral. A recipient of a 2011 Creative Capital | Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant for Short-Form Writing, he regularly publishes reviews and essays in various international art periodicals and publications for non-profit institutions and commercial galleries around the world. Vali is also an Adjunct Curator at the Jameel Arts Centre in Dubai, where he curated the widely acclaimed inaugural group exhibition Crude, which explored the relationship between oil and modernity across West Asia. Vali is currently curating a series of exhibitions about “intimate infrastructures” in the Gulf at Warehouse421 in Abu Dhabi and is part of the Artistic Team for the 2nd FRONT Triennial in Cleveland in 2022. A Visiting Instructor at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, he is also a Lead Tutor of Campus Art Dubai and a Lead Mentor for the Hayy:Learning Curatorial Fellowship.