The scholar 1999

Imran Qureshi’s work connects the classical traditions of the illuminated manuscript, which date from the Mughal empire, with the popular contemporary visual culture of pictorial calendars and children’s picture books. A graduate of Lahore’s National College of Arts, where he later worked as an instructor, Qureshi is inspired by a passion for puppetry and his status as a linguistic minority, inflecting his view of social relations with sardonic humour. Bounded by elaborately worked floral borders, these comical works feature whimsical scenarios of human and animal figures in pastoral landscapes that are firmly grounded in the everyday. Mixing media, styles and motifs, Qureshi’s work has a sense of both timelessness and familiarity, like fairy tales whose characters are thoroughly relatable.