Location: Sharjah Art Museum, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
Dates: 13 December 2023 – 21 January 2024
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 new 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 homage 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 form part of the collection of the Colby Art Museum, Maine, USA, as well as foundations and private collections around the world.
For the Sharjah Islamic Art Festival 2023/24, Qureshi has responded to the theme of “Manifestations” by creating eight new Tanabanas exploring the exquisitely embellished and gilded decorative pages of the Quran. In these works, the action of weaving discloses and conceals the calligraphy of the holy text, echoing the process of interpretation and perception, and the function of words as pointers to the unseen and the fourth dimension.
These eight Tanabanas were commissioned by the Sharjah Department of Culture for Saad Qureshi’s solo presentation at the Sharjah Islamic Arts Festival 25th Edition - Manifestations, 2023/24.
Photography by Moon Light Media.
