Qureshi’s life began in Pakistan in 1978. She lived there, gaining a BFA at the National College of Arts (NCA), Lahore in 1995, then working as a visiting artist to NCA from 1996-1999. In 2001, Qureshi emigrated for a postgraduate degree in Fine Art at the Victorian College of the Arts at the University of Melbourne, Australia (completed in 2002), where she currently lives. This is a singular move of residence, however, Qureshi’s work in biennales, exhibitions, residencies, and the movement of her work into permanent collections is vast, and spans the world’s major art centers (such as Venice, Los Angeles, New York, Honolulu, Tokyo, and London).
Her signature style contains elements of traditional Persian and Mughal miniature painting, which Qureshi adapts to contemporary themes with overlays, text, exploding the size from a traditional miniature, which usually would have been in manuscript form, to a more current, larger format which stands individually.
Nusra Latif Qureshi’s work was already familiar to me from my time working as an assistant in Smith College Museum’s Cunningham Center for Works on Paper. While I love her aesthetic, a quote from an interview provided the impetus to make her the focus of this project:
My cultural sensibility is still based in Pakistan, though it is augmented by living next to various cultures thriving in Australia; I bring many rich traditions to it and in turn, accept what other cultures bring with them.
I do not carry the weight of explaining my Pakistani tradition and culture to a ‘western’ audience. One reason for this stance is that there is no isolated or ‘pure’ tradition in any culture; all living cultures lend and borrow, cull and adopt from the ones in their vicinity.
For more information about Nusra Latif Qureshi, please visit her website