In collaboration with Corvi-Mora, London

Aisha Khalidand Imran Qureshiwere both born in 1972 and studied miniature painting at the National College of Arts in Lahore, Pakistan, where they continue to live as a married couple and have two sons. Though they work independently as artists, both have expanded upon the vocabulary of traditional miniature painting from the Indian subcontinent, investing it with a relevancy both personal and political. Often exhibiting together, their works continue to diverge from each other, resulting in differences of scale, materials, imagery, and approach.

Aisha Khalidstarted working on the paintings presented in this exhibition in November of 2014. A few weeks later a horrific terrorist attack took place at the Army Public School in Peshawar, killing 150 children. Aisha was very affected by this event and her grief seeped into her work: the color grey started to appear while the recurring image of the flower was transformed by always being truncated, interrupted, cut up, no tulip is shown whole. All of her works in the exhibition developed this tension between beauty and order on one side and grief and despondency on the other. Khalid’s works fuse the disciplines of geometric patterning and botanical studies into ambiguous correlations, subjects defined by their ghosts.

The paintings, installations and videos of Imran Qureshi have always had a very strong link to current events, often reflecting on the troubled state of his native land. The works presented in this exhibition are part of a series initiated in 2010, after having witnessed the aftermath of a terrorist attack in a busy market place in Lahore. The red paint simulates blood, while the finely painted petals, the gold grounds, and the feeling of a garden at night are "germs of hope" (as the artist calls them), all standing for the persistency of the life force, against all odds. Qureshi’s paintings juxtapose random, seemingly violent splatters with precise mark-making, melding control and abandon into an orchestrated whole.

Aisha Khalid was born in Lahore in 1972, earned a BFA from the National College of Arts there and went on to study at the Rijksakademiein Amsterdam. Solo shows of her works has been held in Rohtas Gallery, Islamabad (2000), Rohtas ll Gallery, Lahore (2003), Corvi-Mora, London (2005) Anant Art Gallery, Delhi, (2006), CorviMora,Pump House Gallery London (2008), Pao Galleries, Hong Kong (2010 & 2014), WhitWorth Art Gallery, Manchester (2012), and the Aga Khan Museum, Toronto (2014). Her two-person shows with Imran Qureshi include Corvi-Mora, London (2001, 2007 & 2010), Admit One Gallery, New York (2001), The Experimental Gallery, Hong Kong Arts Centre, Hong Kong (2007).Her works have been included in group shows at the Centre of Contemporary Art Glasgow (2000), Brunei Gallery, London (2000), Harris Museum & Art Gallery, Preston (2002), Royal Academy, London (2002), Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield CT (2005), Belvedere, Vienna (2009), The Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris (2011), the Victoria & Albert Museum, London(2011), Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Fukuoka (2012), Singapore Art Museum ( 2013), and the Modern Art Museum, Arnhem, The Netherlands (2014).She has also been part of the Second Asian Art Triennial, Fukuoka (2002), Venice Biennial (2009), 10th Sharjah Biennial, Sharjah (2011) and the 5th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (2013). She has won in the People’s Choice category of the Jameel Prize in 2011 and has been a Finalist for the Jameel Prize in 2011 as well.

Imran Qureshi was born in Hyderabad (Pakistan), in 1972 and has a B.A. in Fine Arts, from the National College of Arts, Lahore, where he continues to teach. He has held solo exhibitions of his work at Corvi-Mora, London (2004), Pao Gallery, Hong Kong Art Center, Hong Kong (2010), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2013), Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum (2014), IKON Gallery, Birmingham, and Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris (2015). His two-person shows with Aisha Khalid include Corvi-Mora, London (2001, 2007 & 2010), Admit One Gallery, New York (2001), The Experimental Gallery, Hong Kong Arts Centre, Hong Kong (2007), and Lakeeren Art Gallery, Mumbai (2011). His works have been included in group shows at the National Art Gallery, Malaysia (1998), Center of Contemporary Art, Glasgow (2000), The Royal Academy of Arts, London (2002), Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Fukuoka (2004), National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai (2005), La Scuola Grande della Misericordia, Venice (2009), National College of Arts, Lahore (2010), The Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp (2014), the Singapore Biennale (2006), Sharjah Biennial 10 (2011), 55th Venice Biennale (2013) and the Asia Triennial, Manchester (2014).