Artwork: Saad Qureshi, *Tree of Life, Prayer,* woven paper, *2023*

British artist Saad Qureshi is a storyteller and collector of stories. For his exhibition at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park Something About Paradise (2020—see my art story of this installation here), he travelled around the United Kingdom asking people what paradise meant to them, and the resulting installation was an otherworldly dreamscape of such intricacy and imagination that no one person could have envisaged such a collection of landscapes or experiences.

For his recent exhibition at Aicon Gallery in New York, Spaces & Places, Qureshi continues telling stories, this time in the two-dimensional format of woven paper Tanabanas (tapestries). It is a form he utilised in his 2022 exhibition, Tanabana, where his family’s tradition of working with textiles and needlework shaped the woven images taken from family carpets and books. Qureshi photographed the textiles that were significant to him growing up, and then printed the images onto paper, cut them into strips, sometimes combining different images, and then wove them into tapestries. The same practice is employed in the Spaces & Places exhibition.

Qureshi’s contemporary interpretation of an ancient artform creates a dialogue with past and present expressions of weaving that entwines with his personal history and family traditions. There’s also the wonderful association of weaving and writing. The Latin for weaving or ‘to weave’ is texere, hence weaving is referred to as ‘textiles’. The English word ‘text’ similarly has its etymology in the Latin texere, bringing the relationship of weaving and writing or printed words together. Qureshi’s fascination with storytelling finds a perfect, synergistic outlet in his series of woven paper Tanabanas.