Mahwish Chishty stands in the center of a small exhibit space she has mocked up in her studio at Kent State’s Center for the Visual Arts. Its four walls, covered in shiny mylar emergency blankets—the kind given to refugees and survivors of disaster—reflect back her image, multiplying it.
Mounted on the walls are 3 ft. x 3 ft. square stainless-steel panels, their mirror finish painted with black dots that appear as random patterns when seen up close, then resolve into children’s faces when viewed from a distance.
The Pakistani-born artist and assistant professor in the School of Art is pondering how she’s going to exhibit her latest project—the culmination of the prestigious John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship she was awarded for exceptional creative ability in the arts in 2017. (Ms. Chishty, who received a President’s Faculty Excellence Award from Kent State in 2018, has had more than 50 national and international exhibitions in the past 10 years, including a solo exhibition at the Imperial War Museum of London, and a group exhibit featuring top artists’ responses to war and conflict since 9/11.)
Read more of this story in the Fall/Winter 2018-19 issue of the Kent State Magazine: www.kent.edu/magazine/news/beyond-borders