LOS ANGELES — In 2016, two Muslim women were removed from a plane, reportedly because their looks made a flight attendant uncomfortable. It was just one of many such incidents that year. Like Niala Mohammad, journalist, wrote about her own experience of being pulled from a plane:

Although the incident was humiliating, it was also eye-opening. Until this happened to me, neither my friend nor I realized how common this trend had become…. It’s not just about what happened to me – increasingly, Muslims are part of a cycle of discrimination that targets them because of their appearance.

These incidents are the starting point for Los Angeles artist Tanzila Ahmed, who began painting a series of works titled aunties with death gaze amid COVID shutdowns. The week-long exhibit, on view at LA ArtCore through July 15, includes dozens of paintings done in acrylics and eyeliner and pasted with paper such as newspapers and comic books.

The compilations feature various brunette aunts, with pink laser beams shooting out of their eyes to represent their death stares. They are adorned in homage to Bengali folk art, with simple white sarees that refer to the Revolutionary Women Mukti Bahini. Their laser beams cut through papers like a train ticket from India, Bengali Islamic text or even a Daredevil comic book.

Part of the philosophy of the exhibition is its range of repetitions: the gallery is essentially filled with aunts with death gazes, but each one is unique and each is bound by the common experience of a death gaze. Each variation showcases Aunties energy in a new way. In “All Wrapped Up Auntie”, the aunt’s blue hair swirls around her alongside Bengali Islamic texts fashioned into turquoise eyeballs. In a painting on a skateboard, aunts merge into faces, then into eyeballs; all of us with aunts can feel shrunken with fear.

“Of course the gaze is deadly,” notes the exhibition’s press release, which has the dry humor of Ahmed, who for years co-hosted the popular #goodmuslimbadmuslim podcast with Zahra Noorbakhsh. “He quietly judges your clothes, your marriage, your weight, your cholesterol and grinds your self-esteem to dust. Anyone who interacts with an aunt knows that.

Towards the back of the gallery is Sorche Phul, a series of photos of Ahmed with writer Neelanjana Banerjee captured by Wajiha Ibrahim-Shaikh. The series references California mustard flowers and “Bengalis love all things mustard.” Ahmed and Banerjee look outwards confidently, regaining their gazes.

My own eye fell on a few lines of a poem by Banerjee:

If you want 
to connect
to your ancestors
then put on 
a silk sari
& sit on a wooden stool
in a field of mustard flowers
…
for a moment (or for all of time)
you will be soothed.

I found the poem soothing. Then I turned to see a web of golden eyeballs staring at me, and my self-esteem crumbled to dust.

Tanzila Ahmed: aunties with deadly looks continues at LA Artcore (120 Judge John Aiso Street, Little Tokyo, Los Angeles) through July 15.