Dubai breathwork exhibition blurs lines between fragility and strength

Ayesha Sultana's solo show at Ishara Art Foundation goes from serene to frenzied in pieces that depict the art of exhaling

Pools by Ayesha Sultana, which is on display until December. Razmig Bedirian / The National

In Breath Count, a series of works that Ayesha Sultana begun in 2018, the Bangladeshi artist transposes her breathing as scratch marks on clay-coated paper.

The artwork, spread across three walls of Ishara Art Foundation, opens Sultana’s first comprehensive solo exhibition in the region. The exhibition, titled Fragility and Resilience, is running at Ishara Art Foundation until December 7.

The first pieces within Breath Count display clean vertical lines, giving a sense of serenity and calm. As the works progress, they become more unpredictable, spread out in some with weary ticks and frenzied and boisterous scrawls in others, perhaps alluding to coughing. The work is interesting in the way it takes an ephemeral act such as breathing and transcribes it into enduring scratches. Much like a photograph, each piece alludes to a moment.

Breath Count is an apt entry point into the exhibition. It shows the artist’s intent on exposing the balance between fragility and strength, blurring the lines of these seemingly opposite states so that they are almost the same.

The artwork also underscores the disciplined nature of Sultana’s process, at least in the context of the exhibition. The works are monumental, not for their individual size, but for the number of pieces they each contain. Their vastness is perhaps best expressed numerically. Within the nine bodies of work on show are 188 pieces. Artworks are manifested with a studious and dedicated practice, often across long periods of time. Their power and scale are in their serialisation. The whole is more than the sum of its parts.

Spread out in the centre of the space is one of the newest works, and in a medium that stands out from her usual toolbox. Pools is a series of hand-blown glass pieces that are formed in imperfect orbs. Glistening with the white of the ceiling lights, the pieces seem like water droplets, air bubbles or even transparent organs. No matter the metaphor that comes to mind, Pools is evidently a transmutation of sorts. Water turned to glass, bubbles that risk being shattered or lungs that have inflated by the breath of Sultana as a glassblower.

In Inhabiting Our Bodies, Sultana uses watercolours on Japanese silk tissue to create a series of mesmerising oblong forms with hues that move across blood-like reds, again bringing organs to mind, as well as vibrant toxic greens and cosmic blues that seem like galactic peepholes. The works are displayed openly, with no glass to protect them from the viewer, giving the sensation that if you get too close, or even exhale too forcefully, you may rip the tissue.

Miasms is produced in a similar vein, with the tissues, however, thoroughly dyed in inks and presented as a seamless train enclosed in a display case. Between the two works, Sultana invites us to consider the fragility of tissue while also acknowledging it as a material that regularly makes contact with human skin. The colours, meanwhile, elevate the materiality of the tissue so we are invited to consider it as a metaphor for corporeal and even planetary fragility.

Another interesting parallel is drawn between The Blue of Distance and the large-scale oil paintings across. The former takes its cue from the bluish hues that overtake all forms and colours in the distance. Sultana evokes this with several rectangular works that simply portray a blue line across a blank page. The blues vary in hue, some even bordering on green. The paintings across meanwhile, close in the distance, augmenting and expanding these hues, from summer blues to twilight purples.

Overall, Fragility and Resilience presents a significant spread of work by an artist who explores timely themes but with a novel and poetic approach. It provokes an awareness of the body and the space it inhabits, as well as drawing a loose but evocative metaphoric connection between the workings of the human body and the larger planetary mechanism – underscoring the vulnerability and adaptability of each.

Fragility and Resilience is running at Ishara Art Foundation until December 7