Hands proliferate across Nusra Latif Qureshi’s paintings. They gesture and idle, point and sign, beckon and dismiss. A silhouette suspended from the cuff, the hand’s scope of influence far outstretches its diminutive proportions. This recurrent form at once populates, orchestrates and becomes entangled in the tension of Qureshi’s tightly rendered and carefully arranged compositions.

On the occasion of Nusra Latif Qureshi’s solo exhibition Birds in Far Pavilions at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sutton Gallery is pleased to present Reaching out, an online viewing room spotlighting a significant motif whose reach extends across the artist’s oeuvre.

Showcasing exemplary paintings from over two decades of practice accompanied by passages from art historians and curators, Reaching out explores the hand as a potent symbol in Qureshi’s painting that facilitates broader themes throughout the artist’s practice such as presence, absence, history and loss.

Qureshi articulates these motifs in a variety of formal means, whether rendered in ink, gouache, acrylic, or silver and gold leaf. The interplay between weight and density, colour and size further exemplifies Qureshi’s tethering of the formal and conceptual drives of hybridity and variance.

Kavita Singh remarks on the attention to formalist concerns within Qureshi’s painting, explaining how “there are silhouettes made by flat areas of colour; and there are silhouettes made by the thinnest, most supple meandering line. There are objects described by outline, and objects suggested by areas of pattern, and objects suggested by absence.” (2) Curator and writer Hammad Nasar has further elaborated on this connection between formal technique and conceptual endeavour, observing how “Qureshi’s insistence upon hybridity – through her choice of styles, techniques and imagery – ensures that her practice continually disturbs the established order of things.” (3)

1. Hashmi, S. “Seamless Histories,” in Nusra Latif Qureshi: Seamless Histories, Lahore: Rohtas Gallery, 2013. Pp. 7.
2. Singh, K. “Born Under Saturn,” catalogue essay in Nusra Latif Qureshi: A Garden of Fruit Trees, 2007. Published by Anant Art Gallery: New Delhi. Pp. 3.
3. Nasar, H. “Disturbing the Order of Things,” Acts of Compliance: Paintings by Nusra Latif Qureshi, Green Cardamom: London, 2005. Pp. 13.

There is a speculative element to Qureshi’s depictions of hands that echoes the indeterminate spirit of her wider practice. She splinters, enlarges and crops motifs to avoid cultural tropes and resolved or idealised versions of history. These strategies remould the linearity of narrative configuration, presenting works that approximate a story rather than explicate the truth.

An interplay between absence and presence occurs throughout Qureshi’s practice. Her work continually mines the fringes of representation and subverts understandings of history and identity. She explains, “my interest is in what is in the margins or completely absent, rather than what has been the centre of visual narrative focus […] My aim has been to voice this quietness in historical narrative through erasing existing glorified accounts, through blocking out details in figures, and through layering grand portraits with images belonging to lower or other orders.” (4)

4. Qureshi, N. quoted in Peyton, A. B., “Loaded Histories: The Global Constructions of Nusra Latif Qureshi,” Orientations, Hong Kong, January/February Issue, 2015.

Art historian and curator Virginia Whiles expanded on Qureshi’s interest in disturbing the traditional iconographic interpretation of the musaviri painting tradition, describing how “Qureshi’s paintings delineate the arrested tension of the double entendre.” She continues, “her exquisitely refined drawing reinvents the traditional use of layering and transparency […] Qureshi poses a puzzle: which is more important, the container or the void?” (5)

Works such as The Room with Red Tiles (2023) and Order of the Spoils (2012) shows Qureshi embarking on this question posed by Whiles, seamlessly instilling ideas of multiplicity by using hands as both a framing and symbolic device–both container and void. In The Room with Red Tiles, Qureshi repeats the hand motif eleven times in quick succession. Gesticulating and signalling, the hands play on the polarities of action and passivity. Each hand is both directing and being directed by the loosely draped cuts of fine thread as Qureshi strips their detail and specificity through varying degrees of opacity. Resembling imprints or stamps rather than direct representations, each slight shift in flex and form connotes a spectrum of non-verbal expression and tacit communication.

Conversely, in Order of the Spoils the hands become this aforementioned container or vessel through which ideas of hybridity may ensue. In contrast to the opaque forms in The Room with Red Tiles, the transparency of the three interlacing hands in The Order of the Spoils lay bare their significance by revealing their contents. Each hand is both a window and an erasure, allowing Qureshi to convey inestimable layers of meaning by encapsulating numerous congregational and bodily depictions.

5. Whiles, V. “The Rigors of Ornament,” Translocal: Contemporary Miniaturist Practice Out of Pakistan, 2013, Contemporary Arts Center: Cincinnati, OH and Tufts University Art Gallery: Medford, MA. Pp. 87–88.

Born 1973 in Lahore, Pakistan, Qureshi studied at the National College of Arts in Lahore where she originally trained in the traditional art of Mughal miniature (musaviri) painting. Arriving to Australia for postgraduate study in 2001, Qureshi completed a Master of Fine Art at the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA) in Melbourne, where she has lived and worked ever since. 

Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at prominent institutions including the Queensland Art Gallery / Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA), Brisbane, AU; 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney, AU; Shepparton Art Museum, Shepparton, AU; Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, US; Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, US, among others. Notably, Qureshi presented Birds in Far Pavilions at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2024, the artist’s first survey exhibition in a major Australian institution.

In 2019, Qureshi was awarded the prestigious Bulgari Art Award by the Art Gallery of New South Wales. She has received numerous international prizes and grants, while undertaking residencies in New York, US; Los Angeles, US; Banff, CA, among others. She has participated in a number of international biennial including the 15^th Sharjah Biennale (2023), the 53^rd Venice Biennale (2009) and the 5^th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (2006), while being included in major curated exhibitions at the Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Vienna, AT; National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, AU; National Art Gallery, Islamabad, PK; The Drawing Center, New York, US; National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai, IN; the Academy of Arts, Berlin, DE and the MK Gallery, Milton Keynes, UK, among others.

Currently on view:
Nusra Latif Qureshi: Birds in Far Pavilions

Bringing together thirty years of interdisciplinary practice, Birds in Far Pavilions at the Art Gallery of New South Wales showcases Qureshi’s articulation of history through her finely crafted miniature paintings, textile work and sculptural installations.

Location: Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
Naala Nura, Lower Level 2
Dates: 9 November 2024 – 15 June 2025

Image: Nusra Latif Qureshi
On the edge of darkness II, 2016
Gouache, synthetic polymer paint, graphite, ink and gold leaf on illustration board, 38 x 50cm (unframed)
Collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales (Bulgari Art Award 2019)

Publication:
Nusra Latif Qureshi: Birds in Far Pavilions

Edited by Matt Cox; Essays by Michael Brand, Julie Ewington, Sugata Ray, Esa Epstein and Robyn Adler
Published by the Art Gallery of New South Wales
Paperback; 272 pages; 27.5 x 19 cm