Beneath the Ivory is Molten Brown from Scottish Pakistani interdisciplinary artist Aqsa Arif combines moving image and textile photo prints, crafting a narrative of the Lakshmi/Yakshi/Nymph, oscillating between South Asian ancestral memory and western assimilation.
Drawing on resonances between South Asian and Greco-Roman mythic forms, Aqsa embodies the misnamed ‘Pompeii Lakshmi’ a first-century CE Indian ivory statuette discovered in 1938. Estranged from her origins as a Yakshi and reshaped through translation and reclassification, her avatar becomes a site of composite identity, echoing Roman practices in which imported deities and motifs were absorbed, re-worked, and transformed within visual culture.
There is speculation that related ‘sister’ figures to this statuette have been identified in their original geographies in modern-day India with subtle variations in their form. This opens up a speculative dialogue within the work between the displaced sister and the sister who remained in place: one transformed through movement and misnaming, the other positioned as the original.
The work further draws on Roman composite sculptural practices in which fragmented ancient forms were recombined to create hybrid figures and new mythologies. Using forms and motifs developed through research undertaken in Italy, the textile photo prints merge visual languages, allowing motifs to collapse into one another.
The work explores what happens internally and externally when bodies, objects, and identities are moved from their points of origin: how they are altered through displacement, interpreted through new systems, and judged both by the cultures left behind and those entered into. By centering diasporic experiences of misidentification and identity slippage, Aqsa reframes belonging as historically layered rather than fixed, encouraging audiences to reconsider inherited narratives and imagine more expansive genealogies of belonging.
Aqsa says: “My work spans film, photography, sculpture, printmaking, and textiles, using world-building to explore syncretic identities, displacement, and cultural memory. I create blended landscapes where folklore, mythology, and cinematic spectacle merge, using artefacts, characters, and avatars as vessels for transformation.”
An exhibition minigraph with an essay by Rachel Ashenden is available.
The exhibition launched as part of Glasgow International Festival of Contemporary Art (5th – 21st June 2026). The exhibition will run until the 30th August, 2026.
Exhibition Panel Discussion
Saturday 15th August at 2pm – with Aqsa Arif, Ayesha Jones, and moderated by Arpita Shah.
About the photographer
Aqsa Arif is an award-winning Scottish-Pakistani artist and filmmaker based in Glasgow. She incorporates film, printmaking, photography and poetry to construct installations in which she explores themes of dual heritage, migration and cultural dissonance. Her practice is deeply inspired by narrative structures built within folklore, mythology and cinematic spaces, exploring this through her own dual identity to reclaim and re-imagine the pre/post-colonial world. Her film Spicy Pink Tea has been selected for BAFTA qualifying festivals and won Best Dance Film at Aesthetica Film Festival and was nominated for the Young Scottish Filmmaker prize in Glasgow Short Film Festival. Arif was selected to undertake the 20/20 residency by UAL’s Decolonising Arts Institute: a 15-month residency at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum leading to her first solo exhibition, Anam Ki Almari (The Trophy Cupboard) and 20 new permanent acquisitions in 20 UK public art collections. In 2023, she was awarded the Platform: Early Career Artist Award as well as the RSA Morton Award. She has also been nominated for the major national touring exhibition, Jerwood Survey III, launching at Southwark Park Galleries in March 2024 and touring in Cardiff, Sheffield and Edinburgh.
Acknowledgements
Iman Akhtar, Talha Imam, Nuala Abramson, The Hugo Burge Foundation, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust, The British School at Rome.
Supported by Glasgow International with funds from the Scottish Government’s Festival EXPO Fund, Hope Scott Trust and Street Level Photoworks.
About Street Level Photoworks
Street Level Photoworks is a leading photography arts organisation that provides artists and the public with a range of opportunities to make and engage with photography. We are a gallery and an open access photographic production facility, committed to quality and equality across all our activity. We provide a high-quality artistic programme in the city of Glasgow that is challenging and accessible, local and international, diverse and highly individual. We are based within Trongate 103, Glasgow’s centre for creativity and we are a member of Scotland’s Workshops network. We run the Photography Networks in Scotland platform.
Framework program
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The exhibition launched as part of Glasgow International Festival of Contemporary Art (5th – 21st June 2026). The exhibition will run until the 30th August.
Saturday, Aug 15, 2026, 2 pm
Panel Discussion (en)
With Aqsa Arif, Ayesha Jones, and moderated by Arpita Shah.
