Alone, Together
Hassan Tahir Latif
Our Managing Editor reviews Fatima Faisal Qureshi’s solo presentation ‘On Second Thoughts’ on display at ZQ Gallery. The show opened on September 19 and will be up till October 6.
“We’re all born naked and the rest is drag”
RuPaul Charles, American drag artist and media personality
It seems flippant to begin an art essay with a pithy pop culture statement. But sometimes, a pop culture statement encapsulates the essence of a moment so perfectly that it is hard to shake it off (the ghost of Andy Warhol must be dancing in a corner, probably). This is exactly what has happened here.
A week before Fatima Faisal Qureshi’s show opened in Lahore at ZQ Gallery, she invited me to visit her studio for a private preview of the work. When I arrived, she was on a call, which allowed me to wander around the space and commune with the paintings. RuPaul’s words kept ringing in my head as I took in painting after painting of bodies in various states of rest and undress—and solitude.
Two men share a companionable moment on a sofa, wrapped in towels; a woman on another sofa, in underwear, smokes a cigarette; another woman lies pensive on the bed, in the nude; women and men in various canvases lost in thought, alone, even when surrounded by others.
What strikes you immediately is how Qureshi’s work has evolved over the years: from colour, to subjects and composition, all while carrying an underlying vocabulary that is shaping up to be distinctly, recognisably, hers. Walking around the studio, I remembered my first visit here, years ago during a group exhibition she had curated at her own Lakir Gallery. A friend made sure that she took me back to the studio to see the works that were not part of that show: oil canvases in earthy, neutral and blue-green tones depicting bodies in motion. Intertwined lovers, friends at parties, more obviously posed sitters. The focus here was the body, often nude, twisting and contorting. Bodies that felt uncomfortable in their own skin, displaced, disassociated, dissolving. It held the weight of Qureshi’s own discomfort with identity, the experience of being inside a body—ideas of dysmorphia, dysphoria. Despite her fluid strokes, she managed to capture the rigidity of a naked body, a watched body, aware of itself being perceived.
Bodies remain the centre of the narrative she presents in On Second Thoughts. There is, however, a palpable confidence and ease emanating from these canvases now. Interestingly, many of her subjects are either fully clothed, or more clothed than earlier works, even as they present a more charged vulnerability. The vulnerability of being alone.
Who are we when no one is watching? Who are we when we are no longer performing? We are born naked, so what is the drag we put on for the world? What are the masks? In this solitude, we are all together.
On Second Thoughts reflects upon this most fundamental experience of being a human. Taking me around the works in the studio, Qureshi muses upon this. The more she narrates her own changing experiences with her body, with the concept of a body and its position in the world around her, the more apparent it becomes why the work carries a steady, confident tone. On a surface level this change can also be noticed in the colour palettes she is now working with. In an earlier show, I began noticing a shift in her practice towards deeper reds and blues. That carries over into this body of work. It would perhaps not be a mistake to say that more of the ‘at ease’ bodies are presented in these colours. Colour is intuitive for Qureshi and she is still investigating what this shift entails for her; but, as someone who has engaged with her practice through the years, there’s a contentment that the reds and blues bring to the surface. It seems counterintuitive at first, but the earlier works with their moody deep blue-greens felt more viscerally chaotic; forms appeared as elongated shadows. The switch to a ‘vibrant’ palette makes the eye focus on the subject more, the emotions and the spaces that hold them are brought into sharper relief. Presented together, this is more obvious than before.
This is where the ease comes in. Her subjects are no longer performing: they’re at home. Both physically, but also sensorially at home within themselves, as well as in terms of embodying their core selves. In ‘Nothing to wear tomorrow’, a woman is reclining on a sofa in underwear, smoking a cigarette, staring into space. The curtains behind her are drawn shut. The viewer can physically feel the comfort of the moment Qureshi has crystallised. The male counterpart of this moment appears in ‘I won’t have to miss you much longer’—man, underwear, sofa, cigar. Similarly, ‘Five more minutes’, (probably my favourite from the show) becomes another representation of the most intimate moments we have with ourselves, that are also immediately universal: a shirtless man on a sofa, wrapped in a blanket, reads a book. Wistfulness permeates the works, the gravity of longing is deeply felt, but a stillness and calmness radiates from the work that invites us to observe these figures. The nakedness here, even in the nudes presented (‘First time in Islamabad’), is not erotic, or at least not entirely so. There is no performance. It just is.
Qureshi’s subjects in On Second Thoughts are on the whole occupied with their minds. Whether there is silent, solitary contemplation—ranging from the restful (‘A sight for sore eyes’; ‘Faisal’) to the anxious (‘A little after midnight’)—or mutual, more public silences (‘Farewell, my lovers’; ‘Roll me a joint, roll me a reason’), the figures are no longer disembodied. They are whole, within themselves, even when they are with others. They’re in essence, alone, together.
These works also touch upon other familiar notes that have been mainstays in her work: yearning and queer desire. In an age where queer bodies and desire and longing are often depicted as dissociative public scenes or more overtly sexual, Qureshi presents a more sober aspect, one that shows the afterlives of queer intimacy—companionable silences, scrolling on phones—but also queer loneliness, not necessarily in a negative light, but a contentment and acceptance that comes with age.
A solo is always a daunting task and Qureshi accomplishes this deftly. Callbacks to earlier works, a logical exploration of the self and body, a frank conversation with narratives and concepts that have occupied her through her practice so far—all of these combine to produce a confident body of work that is comfortable with what it still needs to discover. Qureshi is now embarking on a graduate programme in the UK; leaving with a tightly edited solo show that arrests her life in Lahore feels natural. It also makes me excited for her practice and how it will be shaped through future encounters.
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