Location: I DE V / l’étrangère, 55 Riding House Street, Fitzrovia, London W1
Dates: 18 September - 14 December 2024
Running until 14 December 2024, A Handful of Paradise includes a new body of work made for I DE V / l’étrangère, developing themes from his Something About Paradise exhibition, conceived for the Yorkshire Sculpture Park (2020) and recently shown at the Djanogly Art Gallery (2024).
Exploring the idea of what paradise means in a contemporary context, the works have their origin in Qureshi’s fascination with how broad and various interpretations of paradise are. In 2019, the artist travelled around the country asking people of all faiths and none what the word conjured up for them. Drawing these imagined spaces together, he created three large mindscapes evoking a collective topography spanning the globe and beyond: urban and rural, heavenly bodies and personal as well as spiritual utopias.
Returning to this reservoir of remembered and imagined places, A Handful of Paradise is a new body of sculpture reflecting on how we conserve and protect our most precious memories and belongings. It takes the form of domestic drawers reclaimed from house clearances, second hand shops and friends. Within each drawer, the artist is collecting a clutch of fragments of paradise. Rendered in greys and whites, these small mindscapes have the quality of memories or daydreams, at one remove from the space they share with their viewers.
The sculptures meditate on the poetic notion of home and paradise not as a physical place, but a state of mind that you arrive at: what the artist describes as “a form of mental destination.” These drawers, sundered from their original containers and already freighted with a history of past homes and moments, are placed on legs and wheels, to aid them in their onward journey.
The exhibition is also the first London presentation of Qureshi’s Tanabana paper tapestries, which have been widely shown in the USA, India and the Middle East. The Tanabana series is rooted in Qureshi’s experience growing up in a family where the art of making by hand was an important shared experience and textiles were particularly prized and valued. Originally working from the collection of textiles he grew up with, the Tanabanas have expanded to take in carpets and textiles both decorative and practical, and more recently to include elements from sacred architecture, such as arches and stained glass-windows.
Using many different textiles or motifs in each Tanabana, the process begins by digitally reproducing them onto paper, cutting them into thin strips which are then meticulously rewoven by hand to form completely new patterns. In Buddhist philosophy, the universe is thought of as a weaving: to weave is to produce cosmos, with the movement of the shuttle upon the cosmic loom signifying the alternation of life and death. In these mesmerising works, Qureshi has transformed and reanimated the ghosts of the original textiles and architectures, creating new woven worlds which assimilate the ancient with the modern.
All photos by Lucy Dawkins
