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Lot 98

 

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Nusra Latif Qureshi mastered the skill and discipline of miniature painting during her training at the National College of Arts, Lahore. Qureshi’s contemporary art practice finds its basis in Mughal miniatures, where her composite style retains the technique and visual characteristics from the tradition and invents newer elements and subjective content.

Qureshi’s work juxtaposes motifs from the past with a subjectivity of today, enriching... Nusra Latif Qureshi mastered the skill and discipline of miniature painting during her training at the National College of Arts, Lahore. Qureshi’s contemporary art practice finds its basis in Mughal miniatures, where her composite style retains the technique and visual characteristics from the tradition and invents newer elements and subjective content.

Qureshi’s work juxtaposes motifs from the past with a subjectivity of today, enriching her works with a metaphorical and symbolic value. Apart from Mughal miniatures as a direct reference, she adopts from textile patterns, botanical paintings, and colonial photography. Her works allude to her engagement with miniatures painted under Mughal emperor Shah Jahan and Jehangir, during whose reign court painting was highly regarded. For example, in her Red Bird Narratives-1 the image of Shah Jahan looks to be borrowed from Prince Khurram by Abu’l Hasan. (Elham Rafat Manesh, “Contemporary Miniature Painting in Lahore: 1980 - 2007,” Academia.edu, online) “She points to history’s erasures, traces and ghostly images and encourages us to look, and then look again. Qureshi does not tell us what was once there but asks us to distinguish between what was and what remains.”(Hammad Nasar, Sutton Gallery, 2005, online)

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