The meeting of East and West does not multicultural make

Multicultural is too simplistic a word to describe the works of Nusra Latif Qureshi and Naeem Rana, says Shivangi Ambani-Gandhi

“It is not as if using the word multiculturalism cures all the inter-cultural conflicts between people,” says Melbourne-based artist, Nusra Latif Qureshi. Her words ring true when you consider the timing of ‘this reminds me of someplace else’ —an exhibition of works by Qureshi and her husband, which showed at the Adelaide Festival Centre as part of the Oz Asia Festival 2009.

The exhibition, described in the catalogue as representing “the harmony and the tolerance we have as a multicultural Australian society,” came just months after the media exploded with news of racial attacks on Indian students.

“Multiculturalism” has become a problematic word to use—too simplistic perhaps—when describing the works of artists such as Pakistani-Australian Qureshi and her husband Naeem Rana.

Qureshi trained in the rigorous art of miniature painting, while Rana comes from a family of calligraphers and started training with his father at the age of 12. Both combine their traditional artistic styles with western practices and elements to create a narrative.

However, being Pakistani immigrants to Australia is but one aspect of their personality and their work. “Sometimes its a bit challenging to be marketed as a ‘multicultural’ artist, as the work is seen by many to have an exotic feel, and some hidden meaning where there is none,” says Qureshi.

When asked to describe her practice in another exhibition catalogue, she wrote, “My presence as a woman, as an Asian, as a Muslim, as a migrant, as an ex-colonised, as a dark skinned individual and as a painter determine the course of images I make.”

The historical symbolism of the feminine figure has been a central theme in her work for some time. In the Red Silks series, which was part of the recent exhibition, Qureshi superimposes a self portrait—from a passport photo—with a Victorian era dress, Urdu text, flowers and birds.

She decodes the symbolism thus: “The text is comprised of Urdu alphabets and some words like qalam, dawat, roshnai (pen, inkwell, ink). The word/text is there as an imposed element, and shows my weariness of word—spoken and written—and its inadequacy at expressing human emotion. Bird for me represents a different state of mind that is not necessarily expressed in words or in phrases.”

In another series of works, also displayed in Adelaide, she approaches the one emotion most often represented in mass media—love. “In these prints I have tried to explore and comment upon the idea of love and how it is understood or misunderstood as an emotion,” she says.

She uses the most popular of these media—film, and more specifically Bollywood. “I worked with three old Indian classics, Umrao Jaan, Abhimaan and Kabhi Kabhi,” says Qureshi. “In all these movies, its not a straight forward ‘love-story’ as is represented in so many Bollywood and Hollywood movies. I choose the scenes that I found visually potent and extremely charged with some emotional state of the characters and put a ‘dialogue’ on it in the form of text, like ‘My love is eternal’, or ‘Love me forever and ever’.”

Meanwhile, with his brazen use of colour and seductive female silhouettes, Naeem Rana’s works allude to another aspect of Bollywood—film posters. “Film posters are one popular form that represents the local way of design and perceiving aesthetics in South Asia,” he says.

In Azadi Bachao, a female silhouette is superimposed with a fighter jet, the Universal Studios logo and the Apple logo, and the text Azadi Bachao (save the freedom) in Urdu calligraphy. Looking at the work, one is left pondering about the freedoms lost—especially for a woman—in a world of war and consumerism. “The presence, importance and the contribution of women in making a culture and representing it and carrying it—that is what I appreciate and celebrate in my works,” says Rana.

Seeing their works together in a single exhibition, it is quite easy to see the commnality in the themes that Qureshi and Rana pursue. Their use of the tools of appropriation and pastiche make the works interrelated and reciprocal—almost as if the couple is sharing their conversation with the viewer.

Though they have only collaborated on a work just once, it is quite visible that they borrow each others’ vocabulary. Qureshi reveals that the Urdu text in the Red Silks series is taken from an exercise sheet that Rana has been doing.

The couple came to Australia in 2001 to pursue post graduate studies. I ask them about the difference in the approach to arts education in the two countries. “VCA (Victorian College of Arts) was much more of a dated, colonial experience with little awareness of the world and art practices,” Qureshi says. The so called traditional training (from the National College of Art in Lahore) is quite contemporary, where we studied history of western art as well as eastern art.”

Even the attitude to artists is surprisingly the opposite of what I expected to be in the two countries. Qureshi says, “In Pakistan, people do not consider artists to be the ‘odd one out’ like in Australia and there is rarely a question like “But what do you really do?” as we have been asked by a lot of people here.”