Beneath the Ivory is Molten Brown

Beneath the Ivory is Molten Brown from Scottish Pakistani interdisciplinary artist Aqsa Arif combines moving image installation 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, reflecting historical Roman practices in which imported deities and motifs were absorbed, adapted, and transformed within visual culture.

In direct opposition to contemporary political rhetoric that invokes cultural “purity” as preservation, the work asserts that there has never been a pure origin to return to. By centring 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.”