Mariyah Sultan thesis exhibition: 'Off the wall and oTHer drawings'

In her exhibition Off the wall and oTHer drawings, multidisciplinary artist Mariyah Sultan (M.A. painting) presents paintings, drawings, and collage assemblages that explore her experience of hearing color and perceiving sound. This form of synesthesia, the fusion of two or more senses, is an ongoing motif throughout Sultan’s body of work, undergirding each of her compositions and articulating a process she calls “an architectural imprint of hearing.”

Sultan’s highly gestural works, evocative of scribing, reflect the interactions of sound and its associated color forms. The artist explains, “whether audible or inaudible, sound waves bounce back and forth from wall to wall, affecting atmospheric conditions and lasting well after the actual sound has dissipated.” She integrates industrial materials such as plastic, cellophane, carborundum, and shellac into her paintings as symbolic responses to this alchemy. The resulting images bridge the deep divide between a surface and a fleeting presence, solidifying the unknowable, the intangible, and the ephemeral. Ultimately, her works speak to the human dilemma — compassion, vulnerability, grief, struggle, and freedom — encompassed in totality through sound.