Indigo+Madder

About the Gallery
Indigo+Madder is a London-based contemporary art gallery founded in 2019. The gallery presents local and international emerging artists, with a view towards generating cross-cultural discourse.

About the Presentation
Sameen Agha will make her New York debut in a solo presentation with Indigo+Madder, a first-time exhibitor at Independent. The presentation will feature new marble sculptures, drawings and oil paintings from an ongoing series that explores ideas of catharsis and metamorphosis through emotion and materiality.

The new works create a surreal and intricate landscape, where childhood memories, motifs from nature and the domestic come together to examine gendered systems and the concept of home. A personal exploration of emotion and their transformative qualities on the body and self, underpins the experiments with materials and the sensorial qualities expressed in the works. Scenes of joy and calm, intermingle with fear and anxiety to create a charged space.

Oil paintings framed by extensively carved white marble appropriate motifs from lace-edged traditional clothing from South Asia to explore ideas of femininity, oppressive gendered expectations and the search for personal joy. Metal, marble and clay flora and fauna motifs are juxtaposed with scenes of the domestic and the urban, creating a surreal terrain. Agha works extensively with pink marble, which is solid and imposing, yet pliable in texture. Its unique, mottled, bodily hues and patterns are reminiscent of flesh. She also utilises the material’s historical links to monuments, mausoleums and homes in South Asia, where its presence has become synonymous with monumentality, permanence and grandeur.