Saad Qureshi at I DE V l’étrangère

I DE V l’étrangère
18 September – 14 December 2024

Saad Qureshi is widely known for his poetic and masterfully executed sculptural installations, works on paper and paintings that explore the notion of home, as well as the fluidity of memories across place and time. Born in Pakistan in 1986, his family moved to Yorkshire when he was 9 years old. His practise is strongly influenced by traditional handcrafting such as textile weaving and, growing up in a religious household, also deeply rooted in spirituality and mythology.

His new solo-exhibition ‘Saad Qureshi: A handful of Paradise’ is currently on view at I DE V /l’étrangère,  a new space in Fitzrovia that launched this September by curators Isabel de Vasconcellos (I DE V) and Joanna Gemes (l’étrangère).

When entering the gallery, we encounter a set of dislocated domestic drawers, which the artist sourced from antique shops and house clearances. Sitting on spindly legs and wheels, they contain sculptural utopian landscapes. Handful of Paradise (2024) features a grey deserted landscape, reminiscent of the moon’s surface. Within this monochrome landscape sits a pagoda-like structure surrounded by trees, headed by a path leading towards a huge globe. Made of building materials, such as insulation foam, wood and metal, the surreal scenery blends elements of the artist’s own memories with a variety of contemporary interpretations of earthly and heavenly ‘paradise’.  Described by the artist as ‘mindscapes’, his installations represent a collection of remembered and imagined places, indicating how memories can travel with us from one place to another.

The title of the exhibition is inspired by the 1985 Turkish film ‘A handful of Paradise’, in which a family migrates to a big city to pursue a better life. Unable to afford a place to stay, they make an abandoned bus their new home. Against this backdrop, Airship (2019),  a ship-like model installed high-up in a corner of the gallery, might represent how ideas of home and paradise are fluid mental constructions as opposed to fixed physical locations; perhaps referring to the artist’s own migratory background.

Qureshi’s Tanabana wall-based paper tapestries consist of large scale woven photographic prints. They are inspired by hand-made textiles and tapestries the artist grew up with. For The Night Corner (2023), the artist digitally photographed textiles with various patterns, but also sacred architectures, arches and stain-glass windows.  After printing the photographs on paper, he cuts them into thin strips. Lastly, he meticulously reweaves them by hand into completely new motifs and patterns, combining ancient elements and ornaments with a modern visual language.

It is fascinating to experience how Qureshi’s highly inventive art works draw us into his paradoxical, at times uncanny, world.  By looking at memory and time in a non-linear fashion, Saad Qureshi: A handful of Paradise invites us to reflect on our own inner psychological landscapes and memories that we carry with us, often subconsciously. At the same time, his cross-cultural, hybrid and phantastic oeuvre that masterfully knits multiple universal stories together, opens up possibilities for a constructive dialogue between people of all backgrounds, focusing on what we have in common instead of what differentiates us from each other – a timely approach in our current political climate that is increasingly shaped by division and polarisation.

Concurrent with A Handful of Paradise, several art works by Qureshi are currently on view in London. From 22nd June 2024 – 13th December 2024, HS Projects is staging a solo presentation of recent sculptures, including works from Something About Paradise, which was displayed at Yorkshire Sculpture Park in 2020. His Frieze/The OWO prize-winning commission Convocation is on view at Raffles in Whitehall, whilst Qureshi’s Organ Donor Memorial for the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel is on permanent display.

Saad Qureshi: A handful of Paradise
18 September – 14 December 2024

Christine Takengny, The Roden Senior Curator, Museum Acquisitions