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

Afterthoughts captures a contemplative in a composition that rejects the flattened perspective of traditional miniature painting. Two small cups suggest absent character. Backdrops II similarly presents a protagonist in intimate detail, while a floral outline references the drawings of flora and fauna commissioned by the British in Pakistan and India in the 1780s to record and classify birds and animals, commonly painted without any surrounding motifs.