Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1986 Bewal, Pakistan

Year of Migration to the UK: 1995

Biography

Artist Saad Qureshi was born in Bewal, Pakistan, in 1986. Brought up in a religious family, Qur’anic allegories were an integral part of his daily life, a theme that would later emerge in his artistic practice. Qureshi immigrated to the UK at the age of nine and grew up in Bradford, Yorkshire. His passion for art was ignited by an influential art teacher during his school years, and his creative work is deeply shaped by his experiences in Bradford, a city marked by the societal tensions of the 2001 race riots and the fractured dynamics of its diverse yet often divided communities. Qureshi pursued undergraduate studies in Fine Art at Oxford Brookes University on a scholarship, graduating in 2007. He then spent a year working at Modern Art Oxford before completing an MFA at the Slade School of Fine Art in London in 2010.

Qureshi's oeuvre encompasses large-scale sculptures, paintings, and intricate drawings, exploring issues around mythology, time, and memory, with a particular focus on the elusive nature of lived experience. He explores how we perceive and internalise objects and landscapes, how these perceptions are reshaped by memory, and how memory itself can render them unreliable. Fragmented recollections of his childhood in Pakistan frequently inform his work, with a special emphasis on landscapes. Qureshi’s sculptures embody the narratives and concepts through which humans construct meaning in their lives, often incorporating traditional crafts. With technical skill that seamlessly blends realism and abstraction, he creates an uncanny universe, populated by objects that appear familiar, yet defy conventional understandings of time, space, scale, and substance. His pieces occupy a space where imagination knows no bounds, offering viewers a dreamlike landscape open to flexible interpretations. A recurring theme in Qureshi’s work is his engagement with shared cultural memory and collective folklore, which often serves as the foundation for his creative process. Through the interplay between personal vision and collective consciousness, Qureshi’s work blurs the boundaries between the real and the fantastical.

Qureshi has exhibited internationally and has held numerous significant exhibitions in the UK. In 2018, he returned to his alma mater, Oxford Brookes University, where he was commissioned to create a permanent public artwork for the Headington Campus courtyard. Titled Assembly, the installation features five bronze sculptures resembling bird-like forms. He is a trustee of the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, where he also presented the exhibition Gates of Paradise in 2019. This exhibition later travelled to Nottingham and London and included pieces described as mindscapes - a fusion of landscape, architecture, and fantasy - based on conversations with people across the UK about their visions of paradise. A related iteration of this exhibition opened at IdeV L'Etrangère in London in autumn 2024. In the Spaces & Places exhibition at Aicon in New York in 2023, Qureshi explored the theme of the Tree of Life and its symbolic role as a bridge between terrestrial and celestial realms. In the same year, his sculpture Convocation was the winning proposal for Frieze's open call for a site-specific sculptural commission. The work was designed to reflect the richness of contemporary Britain's cultural diversity, while engaging with the imposing architecture of the former Old War Office (OWO) in London's Whitehall. It interweaves cross-cultural references, exploring themes of memory and the embodied experience of geography, while also addressing the subtle and deliberate ways migration and tourism shape the built environment. Qureshi has also participated in numerous group exhibitions including: The Quran: Form, Fragrance & Feeling (2023–24) held at the Aga Khan Centre in London. The exhibition examined the Qur'an through an array of manuscripts, artefacts, audio recordings, and contemporary artworks, highlighting its profound significance by focusing on three key modes through which Muslims have engaged with the sacred text across history.

In addition to creating and exhibiting, Qureshi has participated in several prestigious residencies, including the School of Saatchi residency, in conjunction with BBC2 in London and the International Art Zone residency in Beijing, China (both 2009). His work has been widely recognised through awards and nominations. In 2011, he received the Royal British Society of Sculptors Bursary Award in London and was shortlisted for the Lecturis Award in Amsterdam. In 2021, he was shortlisted for the SkyArts LANDMARKS Public Art Commission. Saad Qureshi lives and works between London and Oxford. In the UK public domain his works are held in the collections of Oxford Brookes University and Leeds Art Gallery.

Related books

Kurt Beers, 100 Sculptors of Tomorrow (New York: Thames & Hudson Inc., 2019)
Mila Askarova, Molly Taylor and Mirjam Westen, Saad Qureshi: congregation, exh. cat. (London: Gazelli Art House, 2014)
Mila Askarova, Saad Qureshi: Other Crescents Other Moons, exh. cat. (London: Gazelli Art House, 2012)

Public collections

Oxford Brook University

Related organisations

Oxford Brookes University (student)
Slade School of Fine Art (student)
Yorkshire Sculpture Park (trustee)

Selected exhibitions

Tower of Now (solo commission), Hall Ings, Bradford (2025)
Conversations Before The End of Time (solo exhibition), Djanogly Gallery, University of Nottingham (2024)
Of Paradise and Other Places (solo exhibition), HS Projects and I DE V / l’étrangère, London (2024)
Spaces & Places (solo exhibition), Aicon Gallery, New York (2023)
Convocation (won commission), Frieze & The OWO, London (2023)
The Quran (group show), Aga Khan Centre, London (2023)
Tomorrow's Tigers (group show), Sotheby's, London (2022)
Drawing Biennial 2021 (group show), Drawing Room, London (2021)
Gates of Paradise (solo exhibition), Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield (2019)
Assembly (commission), Oxford Brookes University, Oxford (2018)
time | memory | landscape (solo exhibition), Gazelli Art House, London (2017)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Saad Qureshi]

Ben Uri Research Unit

for the study and digital recording of the Jewish, Refugee and wide Immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900.

Saad Qureshi artist