ISLAMABAD: Satrang Gallery on Sunday opened an exhibition that featured the works by Abdullah Qureshi.

Titled ‘Once you thought you knew where you were going’, Abdullah Qureshi’s practice was largely autobiographical and drew from childhood memories, household objects and happenings and daily encounters.

“His work signals a return to home, and gratitude for the familiarity and intimacy of one’s surroundings. Grounded in abstraction and gesture, his large scale paintings are simultaneously personal and removed - he allows the viewer into his world, although at an arm’s length,” said the show’s curator, Zahra Khan.

The portraits were up close and personal but faceless while the objects were familiar but their significance was unknown.

Abdullah Qureshi painted quickly and spontaneously, capturing fleeting moments and small gestures. His paintings were vibrant, with intense colours and energies.

Black, or the shadow, to him was sacred, it had depth. The resulting work had a comforting movement and a weight to it, said the curator.

Qureshi is a multidisciplinary artist, curator and educator. Rooted in traditions of abstraction, he incorporated gestural, poetic and hybrid methodologies to address autobiography, trauma and sexuality through painting, filmmaking and immersive events.

Drawing from childhood memories, everyday surroundings and intimate encounters, interior objects, abstract landscapes and faceless portraits were recurring themes in his two-dimensional work.

In moving image and durational projects, Qureshi situated artistic concerns from the personal into more expansive conversations on critical histories, visual culture and social justice. His films took a camp performance-based approach to portray scenes, symbols and non-linear narratives that extend his visual language, questions on identity and queer genealogies outside the Western canon.

Centering black and people of colour perspectives, he engaged collective modes of creative thinking, organisation and production. Through his ongoing doctoral

project, ‘Mythological Migrations: Imagining Queer Muslim Utopias’, he examined formations of queer identity and resistance in Muslim migratory contexts. This show will continue till December 3.

Published in Dawn, November 13th, 2023