Sameen Agha

[b. 1992, Pakistan] lives and works in Lahore. Her practice explores the emotional landscape of the home while considering its social and physical attributes as they intersect with gender and self-identity. Working through her personal experience and memory, the works confront the complexities of loss, belonging and remembrance.

Agha works across sculpture, painting and installation. Her recent series My house on fire and Home is a terrible place to love grapple with a sense of contained destruction, as her works invite viewers to contemplate, in a paradoxical sense, the comfort and safety of domestic life against the potential for upheaval or discord. She uses materials often employed in the construction of homes and gravestones such as marble, metal and wood; casting, carving and finishing them by hand to retain gestures of touch and memory. Agha works extensively with Nowshera pink marble, which is solid and imposing, yet pliable in texture. Its unique hues and patterns, reminiscent of bruised skin, evoke themes of agony and remembrance. The works utilise the interplay between strength and fragility, permanence and impermanence, to interrogate the meaning and experience of home.

She is the recipient of the 2024 Sovereign Asian Art Prize. Agha received a BFA from the National College of Arts, Lahore in 2016. Selected exhibitions include Catalyst, Indigo+Madder, London, 2024; Eclectic Mix 3.0, Sanat Initiative, Karachi, 2023; A flaneur’s guide to getting lost, Khamsa Gallery, 2022; SMOG Show, Zahoor Ul Ikhlaq Gallery, Lahore, 2021; Flower of a blue flame, Canvas Gallery, Karachi, 2021; Past, Present, Future, Koel Gallery, Karachi, 2021 and Self-portrait in the age of the selfie, COMO Museum, Lahore, 2019.

CV

Selected Works

Sameen Agha

Grace, 2024 Oil on canvas, ziarat white marble Acrylic and oil on canvas 107 x 87 x 1.5 cm

Sameen Agha

When the night is full of stars, take me home, 2023 Marble, oil on canvas, beechwood frame Marble structure: 40 x 33 x 36 cm Oil on canvas: 155 x 124 x 3 pm

Sameen Agha

Muse, 2024 Oil on canvas, ziarat white marble 104 x 94 x 1.5 cm

Sameen Agha

A spell, 2024 Beech wood, oil on canvas, marble, found materials Painting: 40 x 35 cm Plinth: 20 x 69 x 42 cm

Sameen Agha

Girls shouldn’t climb coconut trees, 2024 Nowshera marble, clay 51 x 92 x 35 cm

Sameen Agha

Catalyst, Indigo+Madder, 2024

Sameen Agha

Echo, 2024 Nowshera marble, metal, clay Structure: 194 x 9 cm Base: 56 x 28 x 3.5 cm

Sameen Agha

When the night is full of stars, take me home, 2023 Marble, oil on canvas, beechwood frame Marble structure: 40 x 33 x 36 cm Oil on canvas: 155 x 124 x 3 cm