In Focus: Ambreen Butt

Ambreen Butt's mornings and masterpieces begin the same way: with tea. A staple in traditional Persian miniature painting, tea staining serves as the foundation for many of her works on paper. Butt prefers loose leaves to bags and fine-tunes her steeping time to produce just the right hue. Unlike her work's later layers, which need an exacting, meticulous touch, the tea-staining process calls for big gestures: Butt uses her whole body to cover her canvas in a free-form style.

 

As for the product itself, it has personal significance for Butt and her family. As she says, "We travel with the tea that we drink. It's the home that contains everything in it."

 

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION | IN FOCUS: ARTISTS AT WORK

For the first time ever, NMWA has produced a series of short films spotlighting collection artists. For this project, NMWA worked with the award-winning film production company Smartypants Pictures to create the series, each video profiling one contemporary artist in the museum's collection. These short vignettes (around three minutes each), highlight the practice of each artist and reveal how initiatives for equity, those pursued by the artists themselves as well as institutional programs like NMWA's, shape their careers and daily lives.

 

The eight artists profiled in the series are: Ambreen Butt, Sonya Clark, Colette Fu, Guerrilla Girls, Graciela Iturbide, Delita Martin, Rania Matar, and Alison Saar. Presented in two phases, with four artists highlighted in each phase, this series spotlights groundbreaking women artists at work today.

 

In Focus: Artists at Work will be on view at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, October 21, 2023 through September 22, 2024.

October 21, 2023