You are here

Abdullah Qureshi: We were never meant to survive

Type:

Venue:

Categories:

Exhibition Type:

Date: 
Wednesday, 22 May 2024 to Saturday, 15 June 2024
Opening: 
Tuesday, 21 May 2024 - 5:00pm to 8:00pm

Abdullah Qureshi is a Pakistan-born artist, curator, and educator. Rooted in traditions of abstraction, he incorporates gestural, poetic, and hybrid methodologies to address autobiography, trauma, and sexuality, through painting, filmmaking, and immersive events.

Drawing from childhood memories, everyday surroundings, and intimate encounters, recurring motifs in his two-dimensional work are interior objects, abstract landscapes, and faceless portraits. In moving image and durational projects, Qureshi situates artistic concerns from the personal into more expansive conversations on critical histories, visual culture, and social justice. His films take a camp performance-based approach to portray scenes, symbols, and non-linear narratives that extend his visual language, questions on identity, and queer genealogies outside the Western canon.

Working with long-term collaborators, Qureshi’s curating, cultural programming, pedagogy, and writings further articulate his inquiries in feminist, LGBTIQ2S+, decolonial, anti-racist, and migratory discourses. Centring Black and People of Colour perspectives, he engages collective modes of creative thinking, organisation, and production. Through his ongoing doctoral project, Mythological Migrations: Imagining Queer Muslim Utopias, he examines formations of queer identity and resistance in Muslim migratory contexts.

Artist ( Description ): 

Abdullah Qureshi was born in 1987, in Lahore, Pakistan. His work has been exhibited internationally, including at the National Gallery of Art, Islamabad, Alhamra Art Gallery, Lahore, Rossi & Rossi, London, Berlinische Galerie, Berlin, Twelve Gates Arts, Philadelphia, and SOMArts Cultural Center, San Francisco. He has held numerous positions at cultural and educational institutions, including the British Council Pakistan and National College of Arts, Lahore. Qureshi has conducted lectures, paper readings, and artist talks around the world, including at the Film and TV School of Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU), Prague, Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki, PRAKSIS, Oslo, Residency Unlimited, New York, University of California, Irvine, Valand Academy, Gothenburg, and Fábrica de Arte Cubano, Havana.

In 2017, Qureshi received the Art and International Cooperation fellowship at Zurich University of the Arts, and in 2018, a research fellowship at the Center for Arts, Design, and Social Research, Boston. In 2019, he joined the Centre for Feminist Research, York University, Toronto, as a visiting graduate student. Qureshi is currently a Doctoral Candidate at Aalto University, Espoo, and Lecturer in Fine Art: Contemporary Practices at Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne.

Telephone: 
+44 0191 490 1294
Venue ( Address ): 

Orbis Community, 65 High Street, Gateshead, NE8 2AP UK

Vane , Gateshead

 


 

Follow @_artweek

 


 

 

Other events from Vane

view
Mike Collier in collaboration with Tom Jordan: Moments of Wonder
03/05/2026 to 03/28/2026
view
Shape Exhibition
02/23/2026 to 02/28/2026
view
Between Dialogues
02/05/2026 to 02/07/2026
view
From Tyne to Kamo
01/29/2026 to 01/31/2026

Pages

Related Shows This Week in UK

view
Sam Rabin (1903-1991): The Art of the Ring
02/05/2026 to 05/01/2026
view
The Ground Beneath Me - Laisul Hoque
02/06/2026 to 04/12/2026
view
The House
03/06/2026 to 04/19/2026
view
Revealing Genius, Conserving Art
11/06/2025 to 03/29/2026
view
100 x 100 - Presented by BobCat Gallery
03/01/2026 to 03/31/2026
view
Rebecca Riess: Lossless
03/14/2026 to 06/07/2026
view
ASHES to FIRE
02/13/2026 to 04/05/2026
view
The Art of Nursing: Creativity, Resistance, Renewal
06/26/2025 to 06/26/2027

Pages