5 Questions with Nusra Latif Qureshi
Nusra Latif Qureshi was born in Lahore, Pakistan. Over the course of her thirty-year career, Qureshi has presented work at the Sharjah Biennale (2023), the Venice Biennale (2009) and the Asia Pacific Triennial (2006). Qureshi’s work is held in public collections in Australia, the United States and Japan, as well as private collections in Australia, Dubai, Europe, Pakistan, India and the United States.
Nusra Latif Qureshi: Birds in Far Pavilions at the Art Gallery of New South Wales is her first major monographic exhibition in Australia.
‘On the edges of darkness II’ 2016, gouache, synthetic polymer paint, ink and gold leaf on illustration board, 38 x 50 cm, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Bulgari Art Award 2019 © Nusra Latif Qureshi
No.1
Birds in Far Pavilions is your first major solo exhibition. Can you tell us a bit more about it, and how it speaks to the body of work you have shown so far over your thirty-year painting practice?
The show is an accumulative collection of concepts and ideas I have been working with over the past thirty years. The exhibition presents a survey of work that aims to engage the audience through a wide range of practices and media. The commissioned work is an expansion of some ideas exploring colonial aftermath and assignment of values to historical objects outside their cultural context. I am grateful to Art Gallery New South Wales and Powerhouse Museum for this opportunity to access, interact and work with the collections-it has been a truly meaningful experience.
No.2
You’re trained in musaviri, an ancient art form which was brought from Persia to the Mughal courts of what is now India and Pakistan in the sixteenth century. How do you think you reinterpret this historical painting tradition in a contemporary context?
I find the practice and history of musaviri fascinating. As an art student in Lahore I became interested in the possibilities of narrative structure in historical paintings.
There is certain richness to this traditional form of painting. When I see the immense variety of subjects and techniques employed in the historical practice, I am led by my fascination to a synthesis of those methods. Artists from that era worked in a certain way that is generally not familiar in art schools. It is a way of seeing the world and a sensibility that has a strong appeal for me as an artist.
I have followed and enjoyed this sense of exploration—engaging with ways of representation which are significantly different from a Renaissance worldview with its systems of perspective whereby one is technically limited in presenting certain ideas. My focus has been to study the methods of constructing visual narratives developed and favoured by artists of the Mughal era in particular. I am averse to the idea of a conventional-looking facade and simplified visual emulation of historical language. I am not too interested in what the image ‘looks’ like; I am more focused on how a complex thought can be represented through methods learnt from an existing long-established practice of painting.
No.3
You moved to Melbourne from Lahore in 2001 to pursue postgraduate study, and still exhibit and speak in Pakistan occasionally. Birds in Far Pavilions will show some of this early work as well. How did migrating to Australia affect your creative process and production, if at all? Do you find yourself showing different themes in Australia versus Pakistan?
It is a long-held dream of many—by choice or by force of circumstances—to move to another place, [particularly if it is] a safer or more affluent place. Conversely, the desire to cross boundaries and live with freedom is also a dream for many. An art practice may lead to some of these freedoms. The finality of nationhood and nationalities seem superfluous, and if one is able to find the space anywhere and in-between, a dream can be pursued, and that is certainly a privilege.
Moving to Australia has been helpful in finding existing connections between colonial histories. There are parallels that are obvious and then there are hidden connections between how colonial administration worked across continents. I have been able to expand my research interests through this discovery. When I show my work in Pakistan—I recently had a show there—the interaction is richer, perhaps sometimes culturally refined and informed, although I do not make or alter my work just in response to the location.
No.4
What does your research process look like?
I accumulate. This amassing or gathering is mostly visual. I go through databases of gallery and museum collections and archives; I look at books, read fiction, and try to create rooms for imagination through this reading of images and words. I also sift through this material accumulation to arrange, and to categorise images into possible and flexible groupings. The relationship between the groups is considered, their purpose/response to each other and how and where the mood of the work will sit if and when I shift the visual focus.
No.5
How do you go about composing a painting? And when do you decide it’s finished?
The compositions for work are mostly meticulously planned. As I use tracings on paper quite a lot, it is possible to move images before they appear on a painting surface. This method is also applied to digital images where the process of moving segments becomes much faster than in a painting. I decide on the final placement of the images and execution through painting, collage or drawing. There is a great deal of layering that lends complexity to the narrative. I find that these relational placements create points of focus, interest or connection that then aids in developing a cohesive whole picture. It is important for the segments to retain their presence and voice. A work is perhaps finished when there is no more room to add another idea.
(Credit: Jenni Carter)
Find out more
This is the first major solo exhibition of Melbourne-based artist Nusra Latif Qureshi, who is best known for her finely crafted contemporary miniature paintings.
Drawing on both historical and contemporary references, Qureshi works in the space between tradition and experimentation, in a practice that extends to collage and photography. Born in Pakistan, she trained at the National College of Arts in Lahore, where she learnt the painting traditions that had been brought to the Mughal courts from Persia in the 16th century and developed in the region.
This exhibition traces Qureshi’s 30-year career from her early paintings in Lahore, in which she began to reimagine traditional forms, to their zenith beyond the page and into 3D sculpture with a new commissioned installation. It includes the subtle yet powerful suite of paintings for which Qureshi received the Bulgari Art Award in 2019, which speak to her experience of moving to Australia in 2001 and offer a window into the rich and complex history of Pakistan while bearing witness to the conflicts and consequences of colonialism.
At once beautiful and challenging, Qureshi’s works bear witness to the indelible presence of history and the persistence of trauma, dislocation and loss, coupled with the uncertainties of love. In her meticulously painted vignettes, lonely female figures frequently float among fields of colour, paradoxically inscribed on the page and yet yearning for freedom.
The exhibition runs from 9 November 2024 to 15 June 2025, at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.