In The Subject is the Subject..., Naira Mushtaq draws us into an intricate meditation on memory, identity, and the layered act of looking. London-based artist Mushtaq mines the visual language of found photographs and colonial film archives to reconstruct moments from a past that is both distant and strangely familiar. Her practice, rooted in the deconstruction and reframing of the vernacular image, unearths the pliability of memory and the quiet fictions of portraiture.

This exhibition focuses on the complex notion of ‘the subject’ as a historical figure, photographic sitter, and imperial citizen. Her painted portraits, derived from studio photographs of South Asians taken during the British Raj, examine individuals who were subjects in multiple ways: subjects of an empire, subjects of a camera, and subjects of artistic reinterpretation. In the act of posing, often in starched collars and borrowed dignity, they appear suspended in time, offering themselves to a future gaze, never anticipating the layers of context in which they would be re-viewed.

Mushtaq's process is both physical and conceptual. These paintings expand on the notion of memory as a fallacy, the push and pull of paint on the surface, which oscillates between existence and ghostly impressions, often smoothing away distinct features until the figures teeter on the edge of recognition and anonymity. They are rendered generic yet retain a profound emotional weight. By distancing herself from the specific identities of her subjects, none of whom are related to her, Mushtaq also distances us, inviting us to confront the strange intimacy of a memory that isn't ours. There is a deliberate friction in her work between the archival and the imagined, between historical distance and emotional immediacy. Her portraits are not reconstructions of fact but reinterpretations of how history feels in the present.

In this way, The Subject is the Subject... becomes a meditation on the false coherence of nostalgia and the seductive illusion of belonging. The repetition in the title serves as a gentle insistence, a reminder that what we see is always layered with meaning—contested, translated, and revised over time.

Mushtaq's postgraduate work at Central Saint Martins (where she received the prestigious International Vice-Chancellor Scholarship and graduated with distinction) informs her cultural sensitivity and nuanced approach. Her practice remains firmly committed to dismantling visual hierarchies, giving equal weight to found images, family album detritus, and grand colonial portraiture. In doing so, she asks, What happens when the gaze of empire is turned inward? When the faces it once catalogued and dismissed are reexamined not as data points but as deeply human presences?

Ultimately, this exhibition is less about retrieval than it is about re-seeing. In these quiet, haunting images, Mushtaq offers us the possibility of connection across time and distance while also gently reminding us of the inevitable gaps. The Subject, after all, is constantly shifting—seen and seeing, captured and reimagined, known and unknowable.