Imran Qureshi

Imran Qureshi is arguably one of the most celebrated artists to emerge from Pakistan in the last twenty years. This new exhibition at QUAD will offer an insight into the world of contemporary miniature painting – core to Qureshi’s practice – from Pakistan. Rooted in the tradition of 16th Century Mughal art and culture, contemporary miniature painting has at its core the National College of Art (NCA) in Lahore, where this discipline has been taught since the early 1900s.

The project in Derby will be divided into two main but inter-linked parts: a display of works by Imran Qureshi in QUAD Gallery One and the ‘Maktab’, an itinerant painting academy which will be set up in the QUAD Gallery Two.

The new exhibition in QUAD Gallery One by Qureshi will feature an installation made from over 30,000 pieces of paper forming an immense ‘paper mountain’. This centrepiece of the exhibition references those ‘...who have been buried without their lives honoured or the circumstances of their deaths investigated’. The exhibition will also include his signature miniature works, recent larger-scale works on canvas, and the UK premier of new video works that focus on everyday life in Pakistan.

The Maktab painting school in QUAD Gallery Two is a live durational event by seven emerging miniature painting artists from Lahore, Pakistan: Shah Abdullah, Fizza Hussain, Syed Hussain, Sajid Khan, Zarina Khan, Tahir Ali Sadiq and Eesha Suhail. The artists are recent graduates from Lahore NCA, who took part in the first Maktab in 2018 at Lahore Biennale. They will be present and working in the Gallery, which will be transformed into a Maktab painting studio from 28th November until 10th December. The artists will be making new works in the gallery space together with a group of artists from the UK, the paintings produced will then become part of the exhibition.

The exhibition in QUAD Gallery Two will also showcase work by six young contemporary miniature painters currently studying under Qureshi at the National College of Art in Lahore: Aliya Kazim, Altamash, Hamida, Hamna Khalid, Hira Asim and Natalia Ashraf.  Imran Qureshi has taught at the NCA since graduation and has always considered teaching an integral part of his practice.

More info here.