The practice of creating miniature paintings, which traditionally were commissioned to illustrate religious stories, scientific texts, poetry, tales, and imperial histories, was scrupulous and extremely attentive to details.

In the South-east Asian region, regardless of its strong connection with present-day Pakistan, contemporary miniature painting associates with a larger history of Indian art. In relation to practice, the genre is intently linked to the age-old tradition of Indian miniature painting, and specifically to Mughal painting, known locally as musawwari. Both musawwari (which after the colonial period was known as “miniature painting”) and its modern derivative share a penchant for naturalism that is rooted in European influences. During the Mughal era, royal patrons encouraged their painters to assimilate aesthetic principles from the illusionistic vocabulary of Renaissance art. The new emphasis on linear perspective, naturalistic modeling, and individual portraiture was a direct result of the encounter between east and west. However, Mughal artists maintained a strong sense of continuity with the Indian tradition in terms of both form and content.

In 1872, the British founded the Mayo School of Industrial Arts in Lahore in order to encourage the fabrication of local crafts for the intention of international trade¹.Under British sponsorship, miniature painting was viewed yet as another bizarre product². After the partition of India and Pakistan, the Mayo School became the National College of Arts (NCA). As it remodeled itself according to a modern, European paradigm, the traditional art forms previously taught at the school disappeared, with Miniature Painting hardly surviving. In the year 1982 it was Bashir Ahmad, a pupil of one of the last established master miniaturists who prospered in introducing Miniature Painting as an important and essential subject in at the institute’s fine art department.

Celebrated for working across media, from small-scale miniature paintings and works on paper to large-scale paintings and site-specific installations, Imran Qureshi conflates the traditional and the contemporary. Trained in Pakistan in the exacting craft of miniature painting, which emerged in the court of the Mughal Empire in the 16th century, Qureshi’s pioneering practice constantly confronts traditional artforms with current contexts. He pushes the boundaries of miniature painting, as well as the boundaries of 20^th century abstraction. The artist was always interested in investigating the possibilities of working wih traditional miniature painting using the vocabulary of a contemporary artform. Drawing upon the technique, motifs, and visual language of these modes, he transforms them into a distinct new aesthetic. A defining element of his practice is the surprising fusion of a series of contradictions: small-scale versus large-scale, abstract versus figurative, meticulous brushwork versus spattering paint, and beauty versus violence.

The Pakistan Embassy in the Netherlands, organised Qureshi’s first solo exhibition at the prestigious Pulchri Studio in The Hague. The show titled Scattered Yet Together was officially opened by the Ambassador of Pakistan, H.E. Ambassador Suljuk Mustansar Tarar, Marieta Reijerkero (Chairperson of Pulchri Studio) and Imran Qureshi.

As one steps into Qureshi’s Scattered yet Together at the Pulchri Studio, one is met with a lustrous phantasm of colour. The Pulchri Studio space serves as a setting for this body of work emphasizing the role of Qureshi’s art in promoting dialogue and critical thinking about difficult issues. The work also offers a fascinating exploration of memory and a narrative conveying complex ideas and emotions.

Canvases gleam and glint in gold, some are dappled with douses of deep red paint. The same paint (perylene maroon) turns crimson, scarlet, the palest of pink for air and light, the darkest oxblood for violence.

From afar the red bears resemblence to blood, emanating an energy that fascinates the audience. These pieces invite viewers to look closer to see the skilllfully painted designs of leaves and flowers amongst the speckles and streaks on the surface.

Qureshi commenced on his artistic career at the National College of Arts (NCA) in Lahore, Pakistan where he acquired his BFA in 1993. During the time the common view was that miniature painting was about reproducing old traditional paintings. Her took it as a challenge to expand and use the technique of miniature painting in a creative manner. He began to beak boundaries.

He has been exhibiting internationally for almost thirty years, playing with the traditions of miniature painting, producing site specific installations, sculpture and paintings on paper and canvas. Qureshi has greatly expanded the language of miniature painting both in traditionally sized and crafted works and in many original variations in the form of site-specific installations, three-dimensional works, videos and paintings on paper and canvas. His work has the proficiency to form a channel of communication with different audiences, perhaps because it has a strong emotive aspect which links with different personal and collective understandings. His work allows multiple readings and narratives amongst viewers. Qureshi’s work is exemplary of a practice that combines a local background with a global outlook, artistically, socially and politically. Living and working in Lahore, Qureshi has seen abysmal brutality and calamity during some of Pakistan’s most challenging years. The ramifications of that hostility have trickled through sectors of his society and are expressed in the artist’s work.

Considered one of Pakistan’s most important artists, Qureshi has received international recognition for his site-specific installations that respond to architectural space, referencing the historical or political significance of the buildings that contain them. These include Blessings Upon the Land of My Love, created in 2011 for the Sharjah Biennial, and They Shimmer Still, created for the Biennale of Sydney in 2012.

Qureshi became known to a wider public with a large-scale site-specific work on the Roof Garden at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2013. Using the nearly 750-square-meter open-air space as his canvas, Qureshi worked on areas of his dribbled and splattered red acrylic paint into patterns of opulent ornate and decorative foliage that induce memories of the flourishing walled gardens that are omnipresent in the miniatures of the Mughal court. From a distance however, these patterns dim into unforgettable appearances of war and blood spatter and fostered questions about the place of violence and annihilation in modern-day society and the probability of renewal and transformation.

It was the same year he was awarded the Deutsche Bank’s Artist of the Year and received his first solo exhibition in Europe at the Deutsche Bank Kunsthalle in Berlin. His work has since been shown in numerous solo exhibitions, including at the Barbican Centre, London (2016) and Kunsten Museum of Modern Art, Aalborg, Denmark (2016), as well as realising site-specific projects at the Washington National Cathedral, Washington, D.C. (2018) and Al Ain, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (208), amongst others.

Qureshi’s extensive method to miniature painting is deconstructive and spirited at heart. His work applauds the performative and political potential of the miniature by opening up its more traditional elements including its corporality and ties to portraiture to modernist techniques and contemporary subject-matter.

In his exhibition Scattered yet Together the piece Idea of Landscape consists of six panels assembled to form a monumental painting installation. The use of red acrylic paint is a distinctive feature of Qureshi’s work. He began using this particular shade of red following a suicide bomb attack in his hometown of Lahore, Pakistan in March 2010. Nonetheless, the unanticipated magnificence of the graceful floral motifs and the pliability of the vines which spread across his work epitomise optimism. The work’s aesthetic is unquestionably abstract and there is an obvious narrative through the patterns of this extravagant landscape.

Seeing And we thought of you – and you were not there, one is reminded of a dialogue between foliage within nature, embracing the canvas in a dynamic yet violent manner. The surface of the canvases has spatters of red colour with white brush strokes. What might appear an abstract and even ornamental evocation of landscape is instead an unresolved exchange between the life force of delicate foliage and the brutality of densely spattered surface. Qureshi draws upon the tradition of action painting, by means of velocity and improvisation. The act of painting becomes a performative part of the painting’s countenance.

In Scattered, Yet Together, sumptuous blue oval-like ellipses possibly take the place of the figures many a times found in Mughal miniature paintings. Each element of the painting is powerful and is engaged in a dialogue. One can see the intricate foliage and flowers in microsopic detail along with the ornamentaion that is perhaps characteristic of the society within which we live and could vary between cultural, social or political.

Fabric of Heaven merges red acrylic paint with a gold-leaf surface, cultivated especially along the numerous creases of its folded canvas to create an almost hypnotic visual treat. The distinctive use of gold-leaf is unique in Qureshi’s work. The brilliance of the gold indicates an ethereal surface, in contrast with the embellished splashes of red. He develops the surface singularly along the folded canvas to create a mesmerising visual experience.

Qureshi’s works are moderated through a socio-political rumination on the implicit vehemence and disorder of the contemporary world. Imran Qureshi unites tradition and freedom, order and disorder to show the contradicting enchantment and foreboding of a world in which beauty and abundance coexist with conflict and environmental destruction. At the heart of Qureshi’s practice, he explores profound ideas such as life and death, beauty and the unalluring, violence and peace. He pushed the envelope of contemporary art urging each one to introspect and emote in response to global instability. Essentially in Qureshi’s art practice, he investigates thoughtful ideas such as life and death, beauty, violence and peace. He indorses contemporary art imploring each one to reflect and contemplate in response to the current and ongoing global instability. By forming a podium for engagement and contemplation, Imran Qureshi’s work inspires viewers to consider the complexities of violence, justice, and peace, fostering a culture of discussion and understanding.

The Show, Scattered yet Together, organised by The Embassy of Pakistan in the Netherlands was displayed at the Pulchri Studio Den Haag from 23rd March 2024 to 14th April 2024.

Title image: Imran Qureshi, Do You Remember Still, How it Was Once 2019, Gouache on paper, Each Paper 30 x 21cm, Bookbinding in fabric (open) 30 x 53 x 1 cm, Bookbinfing in fabric (closed) 32 x 22.5 x 1.5 cm. Private Collection © Imran Qureshi. Photo: Charles Duprat. Courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac,
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