Did you come here to find history?, 2009

In her work, Nusra Latif Qureshi uses mostly traditional (painting) techniques, develops them, and puts them into new contexts, to articulate contemporary issues. After her studies at the National College of Arts Lahore in Pakistan, where she learned the traditional art of Mogul miniature painting, she emigrated to Melbourne in 2001.
With Did you come here to find history? the Pakistani artist poses the question as to the constitution of cultural history and identity. Superficially, traditional Mogul miniature portraits, early colonial photographs, and portraits created by Venetian painters are strung together horizontally. The first impression created by this “gallery of ancestors” is fractured by the photographic self-portrait of the artist that shines through it. Her passport photograph, the epitomy of official regimentation of identification, mixes with the depictions of illustrious Persian kings and nobles, commoners, and the nameless. In this way, Qureshi pictorially suspends the linear structure of history and the forming of history, and in the sense of Walter Benjamin lets a (momentary) anachronism, the intertwining of presence and past, become visible. Ultimately, Qureshi leaves the question about historical identity unanswered, and invites the viewers to engage with it instead. (EA)