Kaur Alia Ahmed’s solo debut ‘sky, harp’ presents a braided arrangement of video, sound, poetry and drawing. Ahmed’s collaboration with their brother, Zain, a speed skater, physicist and imam, further explores a sense of formlessness and continuous motion in their own work. The artist writes: ‘In unfolding my own alchemy I set out to complicate the structure of my expression with someone I learned language alongside. I began to collaborate with my brother and realize an idea for a rhythmic exchange, a duet of our different gestures in precision.’ Ahmed translates the rhythm of their brother’s skates on the ice with poetry and a score of glyphs that denotes acceleration, turns, speed and motion, while recalling the raga of Indian drums as a ‘melodic framework for improvisation.’ Parallels of harmony and balance are revealed materially and poetically, as the artist correlates the grace and precision in their practice with their brother’s, as it brings them towards ‘flight and gliding’.

Kaur Alia Ahmed (b. 1994 Toronto, Canada) is an artist and writer living in Brooklyn. They make glass, video, poems, jewelry, plays and tattoos, and are a graduate of the MFA program at Bard College. Their first book, Cursive Paradise, is forthcoming from Wendy’s Subway in 2024. Their work has been included in group presentations at LTK Enterprises in Marfa, Texas, Alyssa Davis Gallery in New York, NY and Interstate Gallery in Brooklyn, NY. ‘sky, harp’ presented at Entrance in NYC, is their solo debut.