Asma Sultana is a multidisciplinary artist. To conceptualise her autobiographical work, she uses her hair and thumbprints as her media to explore her identity in time and space. Asma organised and curated many solo art exhibitions and participated in many group exhibitions in many different countries. She was featured in print and digital media—her work is in many private collections. In her diasporic identity, she is Bangladeshi-British and working in Toronto. She is trained in Fine Arts and Art History from Bangladesh, England, and Canada. She studies Art History at York University, Canada, and Oxford University, England.
Artist’s Statement :
Through my autobiographical work, I seek the certitude of my identity from the personal level to the universal- as a diasporic immigrant, displaced dreamer, and minority freethinker. My creative process is evolving around my quest to know myself, my culture, my country, the world, and the universe in which I was born and lived. I construct, deconstruct and reconstruct my life experiences in the East and the West. To conceptualise that, I use my uprooted hair as the thread to embroider or needlework and make dresses, patterns, and portraits. I use my thumbs and fingers instead of brushes or pencils to draw with ink on various surfaces.
Moreover, I employ used objects from my daily life and modify them by adding my discarded hair, which I have stored carefully. I wanted to give my biological existence a place in my art. The process of collecting, cleaning, and storing hair one by one is like a mindful ritual for me, carefully arranged activities like taking care of someone or something. Human hair is a filamentous biomaterial that contains dead cells and DNA; my hair contains my DNA, representing myself or my self-portrait. The way the hair falls from our body, leaves fall from the trees, and seeds dispersal for germination, migration, and displacement is happening in nature every moment; it is part of life.
Textile and embroidery are integral parts of Bangladeshi cultural heritage; Bengal textiles have had a rich history since the ear of the cabinet of curiosity. Many great museums display Bengal textile art; my work represents that part of ancestral identity with a contemporary twist. Long, dark black hair is a mandatory feature of female beauty in Bangladeshi culture; my grandmother, whom I had never seen since she died of childbirth, I inherited the quality of my hair from her; perhaps I decided to cherish that embroidery culture, and treasure the legacy of storytelling through my art. Characteristically, my work is multidisciplinary; I prefer to combine mediums, techniques, and concepts to convey the complexity of modern life in time and space.
Asma Sultana 