Tanabana

Tailoring and needlework have a strong resonance in Saad Qureshi’s history. It was his grandfather’s work as a tailor for the British Army that first brought his family to the UK, and Qureshi was brought up to think of textiles as objects of artistry and skill. 

Steeped in a home where cloth formed the warp and weft of family and of life itself, textiles have always formed an important backdrop and subject in Qureshi’s work, and with his series of Tanabana tapestry works, he has paid his greatest homage to it yet. 

Collecting family rugs and books from their home library, Qureshi photographed all the important textiles he grew up with, cutting them into strips and re-weaving them into paper tapestries where several designs are brought together as materials to form completely new patterns. Using many different rugs in each Tanabana, Qureshi pays tribute to craft and the fruit of lifetimes of practice, and re-interprets it, bringing his own skills as a maker into a dialogue with those of generations before him. 

The Tanabanas have been exhibited widely, with commissions for the Sharjah Islamic Arts Festival, The Saudi Arabia Museum of Contemporary Art (SAMoCA) and private collections across the world.