Prologue: Whispered Beginnings
Beneath the surface of all things, a quiet breath lingers. It is faint, tentative, as if afraid to disturb the stillness. It holds both fear and faith, like the delicate edge of paper just before it tears. In the tender spaces in and around Ayesha Sultana’s works, fragility and resilience do not exist as opposites but as intertwined forces, caught in an interplay. A scratch on paper or a dent in a photograph are not just marks; they are the beginning of something else—whispers that start a conversation between what is broken and what refuses to break. Here, in this moment, we listen.
Part 1: Fragility
Fragility speaks in many voices. It is in the spaces between things—the folds of paper, the translucence of skin, the vulnerability of materials too delicate to last: glass, old photographs, silk tissue. In Ayesha Sultana’s works, fragility becomes further layered with time, memory and emotion. Her Threshold (2012–13) series consists of a selection of photographs taken by her father in the 1980s and 1990s across multiple geographies. His post as an officer of the Bangladesh Air Force took him to many places around the world. On his travels, he captured views of cities, architectural landmarks, roads, cultivated fields and natural landscapes. These photographic prints, tinted by time and the elements, reveal not only the facts of his life, of where he had been and what interested him. They also hold stories of a more ephemeral nature: of yearning, remembrance, recovery and loss—for Sultana in particular. In scratching their surfaces, coating them with glue, and exposing them to sunlight, a collaboration emerges between the artist, her father and nature. In contrast to her geometric work that is often described as ‘intentional’, here Sultana allows for the unrehearsed and the intuitive to take form. In the process, a question emerges: what goes, what remains? Looking at these aged and weathered images, one may feel that they have lived many lives before arriving here. Fragility is not just in the materials themselves, but in the histories they carry—the way they seem to remember everything that has come before. Each mark, each fold, becomes a testament to the delicate balance of holding on and letting go.
Sultana’s practice at large invites us to lean in, and witness the quiet erosion of things and the traces left behind. Her use of materials—glass, silk tissue and paper—carries with it a fragility that is inherent in their nature. Yet, this impermanence hides a deeper endurance beneath. A piece of paper, so easily torn, holds the weight of ideas. Glass, so easily turned to shards, takes graceful sculptural form. Tissue, so effortlessly ripped, holds the deepest hues of colour.
Interlude:
There is a pause here. A breath held in the quiet space between fragility and resilience. It is in this pause that the tension lives, the anticipation of something breaking…or enduring? The artworks are still, unmoving in the exhibition space, but in their stillness, one imagines all that could befall them. As if, at any moment, the fragile could shatter, the thin could tear, the brittle could fall and break… or perhaps, persist. In some ways, this is the tension that defines us all—caught between the fear of falling apart and the hope that we will somehow remain whole.
Part 2: Resilience
If fragility is the voice, resilience is its echo. It reverberates through the cracks, the splits, the tears and fractures, filling those interstitial spaces with an invisible strength. Sultana’s works embody this echo, where resilience does not announce itself boldly but hums quietly beneath the surface. It is a resilience that does not deny fragility, but grows from it—like a plant grows through the hardest layer of earth, or droplets of water make their way through porous rock.
In the display of her series Inhabiting Our Bodies (2024) unglazed at Ishara Foundation, this resilience is unguarded, exposed to the elements, as if daring them to leave a mark. Without the protection of glass, the works exist vulnerably, allowing air, light, time, maybe even the odd human to touch them. The Japanese silk tissue, warped and stretched, bears witness to this process, reminding us of the way a scab pulls taut over wounded skin—fragile but firm, healing through tension. This subtle warping becomes a testament to the body’s capacity to endure, to reshape itself. In this, the work embodies the slow, almost imperceptible resilience, where beauty is not fixed but transformed through time and strain.
But it is a weathered study-piece with holes, displayed on the second floor of the exhibition—possibly an experiment for the series Inhabiting Our Bodies—that most deeply embodies the notion of resilience. Tattered, marked by wrinkles, disorderly stains and punctures, it seems like something that “did not make it”. Yet its very inclusion in the exhibition speaks to the significance of process—not only in the artist’s creative practice, but more broadly in the existence of every living thing. Sultana puts forth this damaged fragment like a veteran of sorts, no longer whole but wiser, scarred but essential. It is as if this piece, in its brokenness, offers a quiet strength, showing that resilience is not about being untouched by adversity, but about carrying the marks of that struggle with grace and presence.
Epilogue: A Circle, Unbroken
Walking through the exhibition, one is left with a sense that fragility and resilience are not two separate forces. Rather, they are a single circle, unbroken. The fragility of materials, of time, of the human body are not shortcomings, but starting points. From this fragility grows resilience, not as opposition to it, but as continuation. The scratches on the photographs, the folds in the tissue paper, the marks on our own skin—they are all part of the same dialogue between what is fleeting and what remains. In Ayesha Sultana’s works, we are invited to enter this circle, to feel the tension of fragility and resilience as it lives within us, and the world around us. One could argue these works are not objects to be understood, but experiences to be felt. In the end, we are all fragile, but within that fragility lies the quiet strength to endure.
Author Biography
Suheyla Takesh
