Armaan Mumtaz

The Thinning of the Veil (or, The Angels Appeared in a Form Most Familiar) is an installation of textile and paper that articulates the origins of Mumtaz’s central exercise in faith-making, ultimately offering a widely applicable framework for self-canonization.

Mumtaz calls to the gallery two ‘Angels,’ fabric-adorned and faceless in vivid pink, as drawn paper cutouts flush against the wall. Sheer curtains of a similar hue are all that stand between the viewer and these apparitions, functioning as a type of scrying technology or revelatory threshold. Curtains emerge from a recurring interest in fabric as the primary apparatus for visualizing inner worlds and projecting fantasy onto the mundane.

Acting as a manual for repurposing schematics of faith, the work asks: What would it mean to afford yourself the freedom to mythologize your memory? If you let yourself stare for long enough, what would appear behind the curtain?