Meet our artist community: Q&As
Part of an ongoing series, members of our artist community share insights about their work, their stories and their relationship to ACAVA. Visit this page to read more.
Jan Agha is one of three winners of last year’s ACAVA Hosts: Three Counties Open Residency. In partnership with Keele University and the Three Counties Open Art Exhibition, the three winning artists each benefit from a one-month-long residency at ACAVA Spode Works Studios in Stoke-on-Trent.
Jan is a painter based in Stoke-on-Trent whose practice spans painting, sculpture, drawing and ceramics. Combining abstract and narrative forms, his work explores ancient stories, literary influences and the strangeness of modern life, all layered with poetic tension and a deep reverence for silence and symbolism.
Read on to learn more about the artists and ideas that shaped him, why paper is his new favourite surface, and how poetry, stillness, and the unseen continue to shape his creative language.
Your name?
Jan Agha
Your type of art practice?
Primarily painting, but I also work in sculpture, drawing, and ceramics. I think of them less as separate disciplines and more as different registers of the same language.
Where can we find your work?
Website
Instagram – the best place to reach me. It’s the closest thing I have to a public studio.
Would you like to tell us about yourself?
I’m 38, Pushtun by heritage, born in Pakistan. My pronouns are he/him. From my very first art lesson, I knew I had no choice in the matter; this was my path. It took me 26 years to finally make it onto a BA course, with a detour via Malaysia to study design. I grew up in a village with more water buffaloes than books, and more dogs than galleries. Electricity and water were unreliable luxuries; images even more so.
I come from a culture deeply iconoclastic, both in its religious traditions and its modern manifestations. That’s always stayed with me; the scarcity of images made them powerful. I’ve always been suspicious of borrowed culture, especially when it’s draped in hierarchy. It’s not culture, it’s costume.
Now I find myself painting in the UK. Life has a taste for irony: weird, comic, and beautifully absurd.
What are your plans for your upcoming residency at ACAVA Spode Works Studios?
I made a few new works specifically for this show, mostly small abstract pieces, experiments in reduction and tension. The main painting (which the poster for the exhibition ‘I am not here‘ was based on, or vice versa) is full of hidden jokes and layered meanings. There was a micro-performance in the works, too, but I chickened out. Let’s blame the weather; it’s an easy villain.
What kind of art do you make?
No clean label. It’s contemporary painting, narrative-driven, often referencing mythology, literature, and ancient history. I’m influenced by Bacon and the German Expressionists, but I try to avoid too much genre-branding. That stuff kills the work before it even breathes.
What themes are you interested in?
Myth, memory, and the absurdity of modern existence. I’m apolitical by nature, which nowadays is an act of defiance. A lot of my recent abstract works are anchored in poetry, Persian, Urdu, the kind of verse that sings like a wound.
Who are the artists, thinkers, or creators that have influenced you?
Bacon, Soutine, Munch, Guston, Giacometti. The heavyweights, the ones who painted like they were carving into flesh. But I’m equally drawn to the ancient and the anonymous, the unnamed artisans whose work survives in shards and fragments, behind museum glass. The British Museum is my regular pilgrimage. I go there to vanish a little, to remember the silence behind the image.
There’s also the influence of literature, especially French literature, with its precision and melancholy. Think Camus, Genet, Rimbaud. And poetry, always poetry. The Persian mystics like Hafez, Rumi, and Attar taught me how to hold contradiction like a flame in the palm. And the classics, especially Vergil, those verses live in the marrow of what I make. His imagery, his rhythm, that ache for order in a chaotic world… It’s all there, between the brushstrokes.
But finally, Jaun Elia. A poet like no other. His verses hit like thunderbolts, raw, cerebral, heartbreaking. I was obsessed with his readings the way Rodin was with Dante’s Inferno. He didn’t just write poetry, he inhabited it. And I carry that energy with me into every painting.
What inspires you to make art?
Honestly? I don’t know how to do anything else. But also, the idea of conjuring something that carries weight, reverence, mystery, and a certain vibration. That’s the chase.
Did you study art formally? If so, what and where?
Yes, though I won’t name the institutions, they’re not paying me. What I will say is this: I owe everything to a handful of mentors. Michael Wright, David Kefford, Phil Allen, Varda Caivano. Their tutorials weren’t just critiques; they were collisions. Revelations. Sometimes, a kind of violence.
Art school isn’t what people imagine. It’s part prison, part garden, part mirage. For two years, one builds an entire world, fragile and feverish, only to dig their way out with a spoon. You come out unprepared, overstimulated, and overwhelmed. The outside world feels both too loud and too indifferent. But you carry something with you: a new language, hard-earned and entirely your own.
Whether you’re any good, that’s on you. Whether you’re seen, that’s someone else’s game.
Looking back, what part of your art school experience has had the biggest impact on your practice today?
Realising I would always be an outsider. It’s a powerful place to be. Unsettling for some, but a gift for me. Also, witnessing blatant favouritism taught me what not to chase.
What materials do you use? What do you like about those?
Oil paint, the great mimic. It can become anything. I also use acrylics, watercolour, but lately I’m leaning more towards paper than canvas. There’s something humble about it, less precious, more direct.
Can you tell us about your artistic career so far?
After my Master’s, I was fortunate to be selected for Bloomberg New Contemporaries in 2019. That led to a gallery in Japan discovering my work, which in turn led to several shows, both solo and group. A couple of shows in London followed. I’ve been lucky, but I’ve also been relentless.
Do you collaborate with others?
Rarely. Artists have difficult egos, and I’m no exception. I would love to collaborate with an animator one day, but two artists on one painting? A recipe for chaos.
Where do you want to take your art next?
Painting-wise, I’m always trying to level up, to stand among the giants, or at least in their shadow. But in a world saturated with images, you only get a few seconds to arrest someone’s gaze. I’m trying to make those seconds count.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given as an artist?
No one can teach you art. At best, they can point at a door. Art itself is the teacher. And: you are your own primary audience. If your work doesn’t electrify you, it’ll die in your hands.
How has creativity impacted your life?
It has redefined me entirely. I’m not the same person who landed here in 2013. I see the world differently now, through layers, through symbols, through silence. It’s been an alchemical transformation: messy, volatile, but ultimately sacred.
There’s no substitute for experience. You can read about love, or taste, or paint. But until you’ve lived it, it’s all just theory. Creativity doesn’t ask for permission. It takes you apart and rebuilds you in its own image.
What’s it been like working in your studio at ACAVA? How has the space influenced your work or process?
The 24-hour access is a godsend. In both my degrees, the studios closed at 8 pm, a rhythm-killer. Here, I can work when I need to, not when I’m allowed to. My studio mates are excellent, not all, but the ones that matter. I couldn’t have picked better.
How has having a studio at ACAVA Spode Works shaped the way you work, or what you’ve been able to make during your residency?
I already had a studio at ACAVA, but the residency gave me one of the best spaces I’ve worked in. The work lives beautifully in it, it’s like having a mini gallery where the pieces can finally breathe. Seeing the work outside the usual chaos of process, arranged with care and clarity, was transformative.
It allowed me to step back, to see the narrative unfold. Sometimes that shift in context, from making to witnessing, changes everything.
Do you have any upcoming shows or events?
Yes. But I don’t announce anything until it’s signed, sealed, and ready to hang. Superstition? Maybe. Or maybe I just prefer surprises.
