Nusra Latif Qureshi: The House of Irredeemable Objects

About the exhibition

In winter 2025, Monash University Museum of Art | MUMA will present the first major solo exhibition in Melbourne of artist Nusra Latif Qureshi. Following threads of art history and politics of representation, the survey assembles works from across her thirty-year career including painting, collage, photography and installation, as well as a new body of work made in response to the Monash University Special Collections.

Qureshi is largely known in Melbourne for exquisite painted works that extend South Asian painting traditions in a contemporary context. This exhibition locates these works alongside larger installations incorporating found objects and imagery, often shown overseas in institutions but exhibited here provide a new and more in depth understanding of Qureshi’s central areas of focus. Her work speaks to the persistence of collective trauma, dislocation and loss, the seduction involved with power and the capacity of beauty to disguise violence – topics that are ever more relevant for us today.

Building on Qureshi’s recent commission presented at Art Gallery of New South Wales, Qureshi has worked with Monash University Special Collections to create a new commission addressing practices of collection, mapping, geographies and the provenance of objects. The exhibition has been developed around several key themes: retracing art histories from several perspectives that position our gaze from multiple viewpoints; the role of women in a largely patriarchal society and the universality of this theme; and issues of borders, barriers and migration. Qureshi layers historical and contemporary references, using vibrant colour, delicate line drawing and a series of poetic motifs that speak to notions of power and knowledge, memory and desire.

Qureshi trained at the National College of Arts in Lahore in the 1990s, learning the miniature painting techniques that had been brought to the Mughal courts from Persia in the 16th century and the resulting intermixing with local traditions. Bringing into this format fragments of her own personal experience and contemporary political events, ranging from reflections on family and the role of women to the ongoing impacts of colonisation, she consistently challenges the typical content of the painting tradition. Reimagining customary compositions and themes, Qureshi appropriates the form to reconsider the architecture of space, history and absence, and the potential for freedom of movement across time and geography.

Artist Biography:

Born 1973 in Lahore, Pakistan, Nusra Latif Qureshi studied at the National College of Arts in Lahore where she originally trained in the traditional art of Mughal miniature (musaviri) painting. Arriving in Australia for postgraduate study in 2001, Qureshi completed a Master of Fine Art at the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA) in Melbourne, where she has lived and worked ever since.

Qureshi’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at prominent institutions including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA), Brisbane, AU; 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney, AU; Shepparton Art Museum, Shepparton, AU; Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, US; Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, US, among others.

In 2019, Qureshi was awarded the prestigious Bulgari Art Award. She has received numerous international prizes and grants, while undertaking residencies in New York, US; Los Angeles, US; Banff, CA, among others. She has participated in a number of international biennials including the 15^th Sharjah Biennale (2023), the 53^rd Venice Biennale (2009) and the 5^th Asia Pacific Triennial (2006), while being included in major curated exhibitions at the Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Vienna, AT; National Portrait Gallery, Canberra; AU; National Art Gallery, Islamabad, PK; The Drawing Center, New York, US; National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai, IN; the Academy of Arts, Berlin, DE and the MK Gallery, Milton Keynes, UK, among others.

Public Programs

Curatorial Tours
Tuesday 29 July, 10.30am
Thursday 31 July, 12pm
Explore The House of Irredeemable Objects with a 30-minute guided tour led by MUMA curators. This introductory tour offers deeper insight into Nusra Latif Qureshi’s paintings, photography, and installations.
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MUMA Talks: Nusra Latif Qureshi on Violence and Beauty
Thursday 14 August, 6–7pm
Join artist Nusra Latif Qureshi for a conversation about violence and beauty in The House of Irredeemable Objects. Across a thirty-year career, Qureshi has persistently explored ideas of collective trauma and loss through works of immense beauty. In this conversation, with MUMA Director, Dr Rebecca Coates, Qureshi discusses her fascination with beauty and the dark histories that often lurk at its edges.
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MUMA Talks: Dreams of Colour
Wednesday 3 September, 6–7pm
Join artist Nusra Latif Qureshi for a wide-ranging discussion on the emotional and political aspects of colour in art. In this panel conversation, Qureshi is joined by Alison Ross, Professor of Philosophy and aesthetics at Monash University, Monique Woodward, Co-founder of Wowowa Architecture and 2024 Dulux Colour Awards Judge, and David Egan, Fine Art Lecturer at Monash University and author of Colour Handling, to consider the ways that colour is used to shape the worlds we inhabit and imagine.
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Access information:
Physical access: MUMA is a ground-floor, wheelchair-accessible gallery with accessible and all-gender bathrooms. Gallery spaces are on a level surface. Contact us for a parking map or further information.
Visually described tours: Get in touch by email to muma@monash.edu or phone 03 9905 4217 to make an appointment for a visually described tour (for blind or low vision visitors).

Acknowledgements:
Nusra Latif Qureshi's work Choice Lessons in Rapacity 2025 was commissioned by Monash University Museum of Art | MUMA, with generous support from the MUMA Contemporaries

^{Image: Nusra Latif Qureshi, DID YOU COME HERE TO FIND HISTORY? 2009 (detail)}