New in the New Acquisitions Gallery
by Ainsley M. Cameron, PhD, Curator of South Asian Art, Islamic Art & Antiquities
11/12/2025
In Gallery 150, we recently installed works by four internationally acclaimed living artists: Samira Abbassy, Kamrooz Aram, Chitra Ganesh, and Reena Saini Kallat. Together, they represent the contemporary collecting strategy of the museum’s department of South Asian Art, Islamic Art, & Antiquities. We work with artists and galleries to build a collection reflective of the vibrant artistic networks across South and West Asia. We also acquire works by artists associated with the region’s diasporic communities in the US, Canada, and UK. Visit us soon to see these incredible artworks in person—on view until March 8, 2026.
Samira Abbassy (American and British, b. 1965 in Ahwaz, Iran), Ghosts of her Migration, 2016, oil on gesso panel, Museum Purchase: Alice Bimel Endowment for Asian Art, 2025.15
In Ghosts of her Migration, Samira Abbassy explores her own Iranian heritage to ask broader questions about identity and belonging. Through a unique symbolic vocabulary of female figures, floral forms, birds, fabrics, and braids, she reveals the porous boundaries between time, geography, and spiritual traditions.
Kamrooz Aram (American, b. 1978 in Shiraz, Iran), Untitled (Arabesque Composition), 2023, oil, oil crayon, and pencil on linen, Museum Purchase: Alice Bimel Endowment for Asian Art, 2024.19
Kamrooz Aram’s painting Untitled (Arabesque Composition) explores the complicated relationship between Modernism and ornament by activating the “arabesque,” rhythmic patterns of scrolling and interrelated natural forms associated with the art and architecture of the Islamic world. Aram’s manipulation of the arabesque fills a large canvas and questions the oft-arbitrary distinction between what is considered “ornamentation.”
Chitra Ganesh (Indian and American, b. 1975), Selections from Sultana’s Dream, 2018, 3 linoleum cuts from a portfolio of 27; edition of 35, Museum Purchase: Alice Bimel Endowment for Asian Art, 2024.26.1,7,12
Chitra Ganesh’s portfolio Sultana’s Dream merges literary and visual narratives, illustrating Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s 1905 satirical feminist manifesto of the same name. The literary work draws upon themes of technology, futurism, environmentalism, popular culture, and colonialism to upend the gender imbalance faced by Hossain at the turn of the twentieth century. Ganesh’s visual interpretation is presented in 27 linocuts, 12 of which are on view now in Gallery 150.
Reena Saini Kallat (Indian, b. 1973), Hyphenated Lives (Cob-ger) (left) and Hyphenated Lives (Poppy-Lily of the Valley) (right), from the series Hyphenated Lives, 2023, gouache, charcoal, and ink on deckle-edge handmade paper, Museum Purchase: Alice Bimel Endowment for Asian Art, 2024.21 and 2024.20
Part of Reena Saini Kallat’s ongoing series Hyphenated Lives, these two artworks, Cob-ger and Poppy-Lily of the Valley, explore political tensions, national identities, and fraught border relations through subtly subversive depictions of the natural world. By combining animals, trees, or plants that are considered the national symbols of rival countries, Kallat explores how the natural world is uncontained by political boundaries.
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