The diptych Silent spaces 1 is an example of Nusra Latif Qureshi's consummate skill in the south Asian art of miniature painting. A disciplined process, it involves the painstaking preparation of pigments and surfaces as well as strong eye and hand control. Trained in this tradition, Qureshi has developed a painting practice that engages with the rich diversity of the visual histories of south Asia. The history of the Mughal miniature not only influences her delineation of space, but also her understanding of the miniature's function in contemporary society. Qureshi manipulates and re-contextualises images from old photographs and sales catalogues in order to provide a different commentary.

In the work Silent spaces 1 Qureshi has collected fragments from historical miniatures and botanical albums commissioned by British officials in Pakistan during the 1780s. Qureshi references details from these colonial albums in her paintings as she is interested in the compositional processes through which different botanical and ornithological species were classified. These colonial albums were painted by the same local artists who created the superb miniature folios for the Mughal court; however, these botanical compositions differ quite markedly. Instead of paintings that are richly filled with details of subject, background and text, the commissioned botanical albums comprise exquisite drawings of animals and plants floating on a neutral background.

In Silent spaces 1 a woman is delicately drawn in quiet repose, gazing out at the opposite panel of the diptych. This figure inhabits what could be a private, perhaps indoor space, her eyes on an ornamental arrangement of flowers traced in outline, suggesting domesticity and feminine decoration. Qureshi looks to the iconographies of both Mughal and botanical traditions to create her own complex vocabulary that subtly investigates how historical notions of order and categorization inform contemporary life.