Lady in a Bath - 3, Asma Sultana
An abstract painting with swirls of white and smaller applications of colour over a darker background
Title: Lady in a Bath - 3
Artist: Asma Sultana
Date: 2024
Medium/Materials: Mixed media, embroidery
Dimensions: 40.64 cm x 40.64 cm
Form/Genre: Collage, bio art
Key Terms/Subject/Tags: Chronic illness; Heart; Memory; Migration
Artist Statement:
Through Sultana’s autobiographical work, she seeks the truth of her identity as a diasporic, immigrant, displaced, freethinking minority woman—moving from the deeply personal to the universal. Her practice evolves from an ongoing quest to understand herself, her culture, her homeland, the world, and the universe that she inhabits. She constructs, deconstructs, and reconstructs lived experiences across East and West, weaving together fragmented memories and identities.
Central to her process is Sultana’s uprooted hair strands, which she collects, cleans, and stores meticulously—a mindful ritual akin to nurturing life itself. She uses it as a thread to embroider dresses, patterns, portraits, and installations, giving her biological existence tangible presence in art. Her discarded hair, a filamentous biomaterial containing dead cells and her DNA, becomes a literal self-portrait. She also draws with thumbs and fingers instead of brushes, applying ink directly to surfaces, and modifies everyday objects by embedding preserved hair.
This approach reflects natural cycles: hair falls from bodies as leaves from trees or seeds disperse for migration and renewal—displacement as an eternal part of life. Sultana’s multidisciplinary work blends media, techniques, and concepts to capture the complexity of existence across time and space.
Rooted in Bangladeshi heritage, textiles and embroidery evoke Bengal’s rich legacy, including the revered Nakshi Kantha hand-stitched quilts preserved in museums worldwide. Long, dark black hair symbolises female beauty in Sultana’s culture, inherited through generations. By cherishing and reinterpreting this tradition with a contemporary twist, she honours ancestral identity while exploring its relevance today.
Asma Sultana has created this recent series depicting the tribulations with her heart that she has been dealing with for more than a decade. To depict her personal, mental and physical trauma as a first and last-generation immigrant, she is an immigrant from Asia who moved to England and eventually to Canada.. Sultana has used a print of her heart's angiogram, digitally manipulated and printed on canvas, with mixed media, including her hair, marker, fabric, and embroidery. Lady in a Bath is a flower known as the "Bleeding Heart", but there is a story attached to it that resonates with her life. The flower has a history of migration since it originated in China and was brought to England in 1842.
Cultural Context / Story Behind the Work:
Rights for this Image:
This digital image is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0. You are free to share it for non-commercial purposes, as long as you credit the artist.
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