Artists statement

Nusra Latif Qureshi studied and later lectured in, the discipline of miniature painting in Lahore. This provided her with exercises in training the eye to see infinitesimal delineation and the hand to control the finest of brushes to paint extraordinary detail. Qureshi has developed a style of painting that explores the broad and rich visual histories of her homeland. Fragments from iconic miniature paintings are referenced such as the figure of a Mughal emperor – which is juxtaposed with a range of other imagery from varied places and times. She has been living and working in Melbourne since 2001.

The outlines of objects and figures are regularly employed in her work – often these are outlines of flora and fauna from albums commissioned by British officials in the 1780s. In the British colony, local artists were hired to paint these specimens, and interestingly, these albums were filled with superb paintings of flora and fauna floating on each page – absent of context. Qureshi's paintings depict varied images layered on top of each other to construct pictures that refer to this complex history. Further, by featuring purely the outline of these specimens, Qureshi addresses what is erased, or obscured in histories, and also what is lost from memory.