Why 2024 Sovereign Asian Art Prize winner made blood-red marble sculpture – Sameen Agha on a ‘grotesque material’
- Pakistani artist Sameen Agha’s sculpture A Home is a Terrible Place to Live looks like a house that has been unfolded, and is a comment on domestic violence
- Agha says the marble has a brittle quality, and sees a symbolism in the contrast between its strength and vulnerability that would resonate with any woman
The winner of the 2024 Sovereign Asian Art Prize, announced last month, is Pakistani artist Sameen Agha, whose marble sculpture A Home is a Terrible Place to Love took the prize.
The artwork resembles a toy house that has had its walls all opened up, like a piece of flat-pack furniture in the process of being assembled. The blood-red marble, run through with veins of white and pale yellow, resembles the colour of flesh and bruises.
“I have been working quite a lot with marble,” says Agha, who was born in Lahore in 1992. “As I was walking around the markets to find the type of marble I wanted to use, I encountered this red type, which is both hard and quite brittle, and I fell in love with the material.”
The work, which won her US$30,000 from the Sovereign Art Foundation, is a commentary on domestic violence against women, a topic very close to Agha’s heart and an all too common occurrence, both in Pakistan and the rest of the world.
“This material truly resonates with me,” she says. “It could look like a brutally abused material. It has this brittle quality, which doesn’t make it easy to carve as it keeps chipping down.”
