Shamilla Aasha
To Those Who Came Before Me
First Floor Gallery Harare
To Those Who Came Before Me
First Floor Gallery Harare
Shamilla Aasha is a practicing artist and teacher of art and design. After many years of working in painting and mixed media, in 2018 Aasha re-engage with her love of textiles through exploration of her multi-cultural background as a Shona and Indian woman living in Matabeleland region of Zimbabwe. Developing complex works addressing issues related to merging cultures and traditional practices and how they influence identity, spirituality and social status for herself and other women in her community.
Aasha’s works defy attempts at categorisation, incorporating weaving, tapestry as well as engaging with the idea and history of painting. They emerge as soft sculptures, wall-hangings made from found objects as well abstract embroideries. She describes them as sacred objects, a fitting metaphor for her narratives.
This metaphor is further expanded on, as she uses sewing patterns, fabric and stitching. This process allows her to create new patterns from the old and with each layer creating a palmistry language.
Shamilla has participated in numerous exhibitions locally regionally and internationally. She is currently part of an ongoing, regional collaborative project, which is interrogating the participation of women in land redistribution in Southern Africa.
In addition to artistic practice, Shamilla also continues to nurture creativity minds through her trust-Asha Children’s Trust, an organisation devoted to creating safe spaces for young creatives grow and thrive outside the formal education sector.
What is the nature of gratitude? Studies in neuroscience, confirm that feeling and practicing gratitude activate areas in our brain associated with feelings of bliss, and regulate cortisol production, responsible for reducing anxiety and stress. But on a human scale, while most of us a raised with saying thank drummed into us as etiquette, genuine gratitude is in many ways a sign of becoming adult in a true sense of the word – someone who has earned their independence, self-respect and self-awareness through work and insight.
To Those Who Came Before Me is the outcome of this process of reflect, analysis and living. Gaining agency in her life and art practice for Aasha has been a journey of liberation from seeing herself as a product of complex and painful matrix of past and rising above it to a space of recognising that our physical reality is only one small component of the totality of our being. Those Who Came Before, are equally a part of what makes us and help us see the forest for the proverbial trees.
The sense of release and completeness is palpable in every single canvas in this body of work. Each painting here a product of complex layering and storytelling through colour and line but equally and entirely resolved. Complicated but perfectly so. Simple but not easy. The sharp contrasts only underscore the ethical melody of this exhibition, we recogise the joy of light because we know darkness, we value the details and rarity of our epiphanies amid the white noise of the quotidian. Life is entirely as it should this is the practice and the outcome of true gratitude.
Valerie Kabov
Curator
©2024
Aasha’s works defy attempts at categorisation, incorporating weaving, tapestry as well as engaging with the idea and history of painting. They emerge as soft sculptures, wall-hangings made from found objects as well abstract embroideries. She describes them as sacred objects, a fitting metaphor for her narratives.
This metaphor is further expanded on, as she uses sewing patterns, fabric and stitching. This process allows her to create new patterns from the old and with each layer creating a palmistry language.
Shamilla has participated in numerous exhibitions locally regionally and internationally. She is currently part of an ongoing, regional collaborative project, which is interrogating the participation of women in land redistribution in Southern Africa.
In addition to artistic practice, Shamilla also continues to nurture creativity minds through her trust-Asha Children’s Trust, an organisation devoted to creating safe spaces for young creatives grow and thrive outside the formal education sector.
What is the nature of gratitude? Studies in neuroscience, confirm that feeling and practicing gratitude activate areas in our brain associated with feelings of bliss, and regulate cortisol production, responsible for reducing anxiety and stress. But on a human scale, while most of us a raised with saying thank drummed into us as etiquette, genuine gratitude is in many ways a sign of becoming adult in a true sense of the word – someone who has earned their independence, self-respect and self-awareness through work and insight.
To Those Who Came Before Me is the outcome of this process of reflect, analysis and living. Gaining agency in her life and art practice for Aasha has been a journey of liberation from seeing herself as a product of complex and painful matrix of past and rising above it to a space of recognising that our physical reality is only one small component of the totality of our being. Those Who Came Before, are equally a part of what makes us and help us see the forest for the proverbial trees.
The sense of release and completeness is palpable in every single canvas in this body of work. Each painting here a product of complex layering and storytelling through colour and line but equally and entirely resolved. Complicated but perfectly so. Simple but not easy. The sharp contrasts only underscore the ethical melody of this exhibition, we recogise the joy of light because we know darkness, we value the details and rarity of our epiphanies amid the white noise of the quotidian. Life is entirely as it should this is the practice and the outcome of true gratitude.
Valerie Kabov
Curator
©2024
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