Loaded Histories: The Global Constructions of Nusra Latif Qureshi

One of the most striking qualities about the work of contemporary artist Nusra Latif Qureshi is how she illustrates the absent. Her work embraces the traditional, while maintaining a shrewd eye towards historical content and the conceptual. Born in 1973, Qureshi earned her BFA at the National College of Arts (NCA) in Lahore, as part of a contemporary miniature painting programme. Like her classmates, she began her training by copying illustrated manuscript paintings from the Mughal, Rajput and Persian schools. The focus on technical precision, repetitive exercise and careful observation that this required acted as a stepping-stone towards contemporary global art practice. Indeed, many NCA graduates have gone on to working internationally, such as Tazeen Qayyum (b. 1973), Reeta Saeed (b. 1979), Saira Sheikh (b. 1975), Sumaira Tazeen (b. 1973), Mahreen Asif Zuberi (b. 1981), Aisha Khalid (b. 1972), Hasnat Mehmood (b. 1978), Muhammad Imran Qureshi (b. 1972), Talha Rathore (b. 1970), Saira Wasim (b. 1975) and Shahzia Sikander (b. 1969). The intensity of the genre seems to have given Qureshi in particular a wide view of the evolution of miniature painting, which she would later draw on in her work. (The English term ‘miniature painting’ is not a reference to size at all. It is derived from the Latin word minium or minaire, a red oxide used for drawing and painting.)

Qureshi left Lahore in 2001 to complete her graduate studies at the Victorian College of Arts at the University of Melbourne. This distance gave her the clarity of vision that comes from such a dramatic change in perspective. It would also give her more freedom to be critical of political and social issues in Pakistan. Her continuing investigations into global histories have included examining colonialism in postcolonial societies and questioning the truth and authority of imagery from the past.

Allegorical representation of Emperor Jahangir and Shah Abbas of Persia from the *St Petersburg Album*
From the St Petersburg Album, signed by Abu’l Hasan (act. 1600–30)
India, Mughal dynasty, c. 1618
Margins by Muhammad Sadiq, Iran, dated AH 1170/1747–48 CE
Opaque watercolour, ink, silver and gold on paper, 23.8 x 15.4 cm
Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC (Purchase, F1945.9a)

Her compositions include appropriated images from Mughal and Rajput paintings, visual quotations of the British Raj, and photographs by Felice Beato and Lala Deen Dayal, but with an important difference in emphasis. While the original images focused on the power and authority of their subjects, Qureshi has effectively changed the narrative by shifting and altering the main subjects by means of inclusion and/or deletion. An example of this is seen in Considerate Flying Objects, a painting in gouache and acrylic on wasli paper. One of the source images is the early 17th century portrait of the Mughal emperor Jahangir (r. 1605–27) with the Safavid king of Iran Shah Abbas I (1571–1629), or one of many equestrian portraits of Jahangir or Shah Jahan (r. 1628–58). During a period of political tension between the two nations, Jahangir dreamt that he met Shah Abbas and that the two leaders embraced—but in reality they never met. One of Jahangir’s court artists, Abu’l Hasan, constructed the scene to show symbolically the emperor’s authority and divine right to rule. In the portrait, seraphim support Jahangir’s halo and are carefully embroidered in gold upon his military-style vest, while the emperor perches upon a lion and embraces the diminutive Shah.

This is the kind of constructed history that Qureshi turns upon its head. In her composition, the seraphim fly freely about and all inessential ornament has been stripped away. In contrast to the carefully rendered facial portraits by Abu’l Hasan, Qureshi’s subjects exist only as solid, flat blocks of colour overlaid with outlines of the winged angels and a botanical print.

Qureshi’s careful quoting from ‘lesser’ dialogues (patterns, botanical images, documentary sources) makes these paintings feel like poetry. The artist continually shifts our gaze by focusing on the female figures that were not included before, as in Days Dreamless—III (2013), which in itself sends a powerful message of the shifting state of women’s rights and the insistence on inclusion. She gives her female subjects emphasis, colour and pride of place in the composition, while in historical models they were absent or secondary. She uses botanical studies, scientific illustrations and textile designs as additional sources, and points to various nonverbal associations. In her ‘Red Silk’ series, for example, she uses Urdu words like galam, dawat and roshnaj (pen, inkwell and ink) ironically, as signifiers for a wordless state of mind to approximate human emotions.

Qureshi’s layering of motif and metaphor has extended beyond painting, as well. While keeping the discipline and sensibility from her training in miniature painting, or musaviri, she has incorporated other techniques including printmaking, silk-screen, and digital prints and photography. Her digital print Did you come here to find history? was created for the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009, as part of the exhibition ‘East–West Divan: Contemporary Art from Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan’.

When I first encountered Qureshi’s work, I was struck by its parallels with musical performance. In music, the silences between notes—and the quality of those silences—are as important as the played notes themselves. In so many other forms, too, where there are connections between things, there are also spaces. It is how Qureshi’s work fills in the spaces and simultaneously brings attention to what is absent in illustrated manuscript painting that reinvigorates and sustains their historical threads, infusing them with new magic and power.

In the following interview, which took place in November 2013, the author talked to Qureshi about her work and the development of her artistic practice.

*Self-Portrait—III*
By Nusra Latif Qureshi (b. 1973), 2012
Digital print on Clearfilm, 70 x 45 cm

AbP In other interviews, you’ve mentioned the quiet political nature of Australia and how it gave you more space for contemplation. Since you immigrated to Australia for postgraduate study in 2001, how has this more detached environment affected your artistic commentary on Lahore? Was there a particular moment in your development that led you away from your training in musaviri paintings?

NLQ It is sometimes easier to observe happenings more clearly from the outside than from the inside. Living between two cultures—which do have similarities and dissimilarities—has its advantages for an artist. Pakistan with its colonial past has several rich artistic and historical strands to follow, some of which I had been exploring. I have also become interested in Australian history, particularly European settlement, issues of past, longing and belonging. These issues are relevant to contemporary global existence in many societies; this is particularly true for migration and cross-cultural lifestyles. My training in musaviri has offered me a set of tools to render my views and interactions with some of these issues.

As I have said before, musaviri as a discipline was more alien to us as art students in 1990s Lahore than the so-called Western painting tradition. Thus the departures or transitions happening since graduation may not strictly be a ‘moving away’; rather the process can be termed as employing or exploring a set of aesthetic devices with a certain political sensibility. Employing photography, for example, is another strategy to explore certain ideas about identity and perceptions. I see the use of photography as a means to an end, as well as an aesthetic device with loaded history. At one stage, I consciously avoided using a ‘pure’ form of musaviri conventions to escape the pigeonholing of my practice into the exotic and the esoteric, or belonging to a particular cultural background.

*Plain Old Manifest Destiny*
By Nusra Latif Qureshi (b. 1973), 2005
Digital print on paper/acrylic and gouache on illustration board, two panels, overall 80 x 200 cm

AbP Your work has explored traditional painting genres, which have more rigid artistic conventions and style corresponding to time, place and patronage. As you’ve said, ‘tradition offers a resolution that has been reached in a particular problem at some point in the past; it is not a definite answer, just an answer.’ How do you disrupt these conventions and how would you describe your motives for constructing new narratives? How does your work address what is ‘left out’?

NLQ I do question the prescribed solutions in a discipline, but only after having some understanding of its workings—only replicating a physicality and following it dogmatically does not mean much to me. On the other hand, a diametrically opposite approach does not mean anything either. Each artist will interact with an existing tradition of any given discipline in their own way. Given the highly political and now politicized nature of the tradition of musaviri, it is bound to have areas of marginal references or total absences. My interest is in what is in the margins or completely absent, rather than what has been the centre of visual narrative focus. I have been intrigued by the absence of portraits of women in certain schools of painting. Thus a lot of my early work has been to put the woman in the centre of the narrative, unlike the super-sizing of a male protagonist. 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. In this regard, I have referenced photography; natural history drawings; illustrations from books, encyclopaedias and product manuals; as well as maps, texts and everyday objects.

AbP Please describe some of the major themes during the transition from smaller, historically based work to your more recent explorations into large-scale photography. How does your focus on deliberation and detail translate into this new medium?

NLQ I worked on a set of digital prints that made use of existing photographic references, including my passport photograph, to investigate the hegemonic nature of certain ideologies and their effect on women’s lives. This led to an exploration of ideas about identities on a larger scale—literally. Along with the change of medium, this investigation was also deliberately aesthetically pleasant, bringing together a set of thematically appropriate portraits from among the art-historical imagery.

AbP Did you come here to find history? has received significant acclaim for the ways you have blurred historical Venetian and Mughal portraits with your own passport photos. I’m curious to hear more about your process regarding the syncretism of these two powerful (and decadent) time periods and your own identity.

NLQ Histories are like imagined worlds, with all their distortions and malformations. Later interpretations of grand histories, as in my work, are like imagining far-off lands, with their strangeness and romance magnified or inversely diminished.

Even before starting the work, I found that I had to disregard the glamour of historical tales and try to imagine and establish a connection truer to my practice. That connection was found in the person and work of artists, mostly painters who had some relation to the city of Venice. Another historical connection was found in the parallels between the Mughal dynasty and ruling Venetian families, two ruling dynasties with a desire to display their acquired power and wealth. I incorporate many elements from Mughal paintings from the 17th and 18th centuries in my work, images that provide visual evidence of political thought and intrigue of the time. Though a salaried official in the court of the Mughals, a painter would often introduce subversion in the official visual narrative.

*Did you come here to find history?*
By Nusra Latif Qureshi (b. 1973), 2009
Digital print on clear film, 70 x 900 cm

AbP Can you tell me about your most recent series, Substantial Reflections?

NLQ These pieces, forming part of a larger body of work, are investigations into self-perception using self-portraits. As with my previous work, I have used layering—photographic in this instance. I photographed myself dressed in ‘costumes’ alluding to certain identities, which are very deliberately unclear—though they reference many historical and social and art-historical images. My other focus is to make the visual elements as sharp and appealing as possible. In the photos or photo-pictures I have produced for this project, which in general terms investigates ideas of self-perception and identity, I have tried to dissociate myself from historical/political narratives and avoid associations beyond my personal experiences. This is achieved partly by engaging in the specifics of cultural markers in the most obvious and explicit forms—attire, jewellery and make-up. By putting on these items of cultural specificity—though they are not of much historical significance and of no clear meaning—I have aimed at crafting a shifting, ambiguous and indeterminate identity or areas of multiple identities. In some images, I have used a white mask—with all its baggage of social and postcolonial associations. Photography lends itself really well to the formation and staging of a narrative that focuses and—in this work, through technique—unfocuses the idea of a singular identity. The aim of these photo-pictures is to address the absurdity of the perception that a single, formative identity must define a person, within the very space where self-perception conjoins the perceptions of the other.

*Substantial Reflections—III*
By Nusra Latif Qureshi (b. 1973), 2013
Digital print on Clearfilm, 42 x 28 cm

Allysa B. Peyton is the curatorial associate for Asian Art at the Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art.

Unless otherwise stated, all images courtesy of the artist.

Selected bibliography

Christine Clark, Beyond the Self: Contemporary Portraiture from Asia, Canberra, 2011.

Duccio K. Marignoli and Enrico Mascelloni, eds, A Thousand and One Days: Pakistani Women Artists, Milan, 2005.

Hammad Nasar et al., Beyond the Page: Contemporary Art from Pakistan: An Exhibition, London, 2006.

—, Karkhana: A Contemporary Collaboration, Ridgefield, CT and London, 2005.

Nusra Latif Qureshi, with an introduction by Kavita Singh, A Garden of Fruit Trees, New Delhi, 2007.

Virginia Whiles, Art and Polemic in Pakistan: Cultural Politics and Tradition in Contemporary Miniature Painting, London, 2010.

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