Naira Mushtaq: State of Play

Larkin Durey is delighted to present the artist’s first exhibition with the gallery.

Mushtaq’s work explores notions of nationhood and identity through the lens of her home country of Pakistan. Contradictory histories are exposed in a painting process that oscillates between disclosure and disintegration, emphasising the fallacy of memory and the ease with which images can be manipulated.  

Working in series, which are often revisited, Mushtaq investigates what it means to bear witness and the ways in which an archive of images can disseminate narratives of totalitarianism, nationalism, colonialism and their consequences. By breaking down images through cropping or reframing and painting these objective views, Mushtaq creates new narratives that expose the mechanics of political control. Her paintings become acts of resistance: vessels of memories and instinctive knowledge from a life lived under despotic rule.

This exhibition presents a body of work examining the language of governance in Pakistan. By isolating imagery from historic and contemporary posters, television and film, Mushtaq reveals the common language of propaganda. Despite changes to government and policy, the theatre of politics, of putting on a good show, remains constant. Figures on stage, their mouths open in song or speech could be politicians or pop stars while the audience is both passive consumer and potential mob. Power and agency shifts again and again as we are pulled into and out of the arena; one moment close enough to see the glint of a man’s glasses, the next held behind a barrage of TV screens.

As the series was being developed, tension between India and Pakistan nearly erupted in nuclear war. An atmosphere of hysteria, fear and paranoia can be detected in the paintings, with every gesture seemingly under scrutiny, faces frozen or unravelling and the palette taking on toxic hues. The works speak together of this feverish contest of patriotism whose shared language calls into question the legacy of a colonial border.  

Naira Mushtaq was born in 1990 in Lahore, Pakistan. She lives and works in London, UK.  

Notable solo and group exhibitions include The Subject is the subject is…, Pristine Contemporary, Delhi, India, Through a Glass, Darkly, Niru Ratnam Gallery, London, UK, Summer Exhibition 2025, Royal Academy, London, UK, and Bringing the Spice, Raven Row, London, UK.