The Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington presents 'Portals,' an exhibition curated by Donna Honarpisheh featuring three rising female artists—Aryana Minai, Shyama Golden, and Aiza Ahmed—who explore the concept of liminality through dreamscapes and half-seen worlds. Minai’s works use handmade paper, bricks, and skeleton leaves to create tactile portals and altars; Golden’s oil and acrylic paintings depict a surreal journey into a subconscious dream world inspired by 'Alice in Wonderland' and Sri Lankan folklore.
The exhibition matters because it offers a fresh, culturally layered interpretation of the 'liminal' theme, drawing on the Persian, Urdu, and Arabic architectural concept of 'darwazeh' (gateway) as both a material and spiritual passage. By highlighting the perspectives of artists from Iranian American, Sri Lankan American, and Pakistani backgrounds, the show underscores how personal heritage can inform universal artistic inquiries into consciousness, transformation, and in-between states.