Nusra Qureshi draws on a diversity of South Asian visual traditions to examine the power structures implicit in representations of gender. In each of Nusra Qureshi’s paintings, she fragments and challenges conventions of South Asian miniature painting, particularly foregrounding the female subject. In doing so, she liberates the images from the confines of a traditional narrative, in which men are the primary subjects driving historical events. 

Afterthoughts captures a contemplative figure while the surrounding scene eschews traditional perspective or symbolic overlay. Two small cups suggest another absent character. Backdrops II similarly presents a protagonist in intimate detail, while a floral outline references the drawings of flora and fauna commissioned by British officials in Pakistan and India in the 1780s to record and classify birds and animals, commonly painted without any surrounding motifs.