Tania Qurashi

My work explores the cultural and racial melancholy of my identity as the daughter of immigrants from Pakistan and Guatemala. Through paintings and drawings, I explore objects, vessels, and symbols from my parents’ homelands to delve into the intersection of personal history, familial legacy, and the broader dynamics of culture, colonialism, and isolation. Objects become vessels of exchange between cultures and generations, as well as channels to explore the romantic, religious, personal, and the political. The act of reconciling these histories reflect a search for balance between two distinct yet intertwined cultural worlds, each with its own traditions, values, and struggles impacted by colonial legacies and imperialist structures. Throughout the work, flowers negotiate between where they come from and where they are placed. For me, flowers become figurative representations that carry agency, beauty, and longing but can be displaced and disconnected. Compositions are planned according to these themes to symbolize the distances between one and another.