Artist Talk: What the Seal Concealed

Museum display cased labelled Writing and Communication

Wednesday 5 February, 10.00 - 11.00

Lecture Room

Artist/researcher Saba Qizilbash describes the fascinating journey of an 18th-century messenger bag to the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum and its link with the artist's contemporary practice.

About the Bag

Description taken from the database: 133 A small bag of red gauze ornamented with gold lace. It contained an intercepted letter of Tippo Saib’s Sultan of Mysore and has his seal of his father Hyder Ali attached. Length 8 inches, width at bottom 5 inches. Size of seal, which is oval with Arabic? Inscription 2 inches by 16/10 inches. Old Ashmolean Collection. Date previous to 1782 (?) (Printed catalogue 1836.p. 181 no. 82). The seal and letter bag in C.110.4 Seals.

About the Artist

Saba Qizilbash was born in Lahore and raised in Abu Dhabi, UAE. She has a BFA in painting from the National College of Arts, Pakistan, a Master’s degree in Art Education from Rhode Island School of Design, and an MFA from the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford.

​Qizilbash is a recipient of the Vogue Hong Kong Woman Artist award, the UC Berkeley South Asian Artist award, the Mansfield-Ruddock Prize and Pembroke Emery Prize awarded by the University of Oxford for an outstanding degree show. In addition, Qizilbash has been the finalist for the Sovereign Asian Art Prize from 2017- 2020 and has been awarded fellowships with Salama bint Hamdan Al Nahyan Foundation for the arts in partnership with Rhode Island School of Design, as well as the Paul Mellon Centre for British Arts. Her work has been showcased in UK, UAE, Hong Kong, San Francisco, New York, and Pakistan.