What constitutes a ‘drawing’ today is a debatable question. Once a foundational and preparatory exercise in fine arts, drawing is now evolving in an expanded field. It is not governed by any particular imagery and encompasses a variety of approaches, including realist, abstract, modernist, and post-modernist.

In the recent Chawkandi Art Gallery show in Karachi, “Markings — Contemporary Drawings and Questions of Space,” Maha Malik has developed a curatorial premise that examines this changing face of drawing.

The 12 participating artists — Meher Afroz, Waseem Ahmed, Khadim Ali, Ali Kazim, Aisha Khalid, Naiza Khan, Afshar Malik, R.M. Naeem, Imran Qureshi, Anwar Saeed, Mohammad Ali Talpur and Muhammad Zeeshan — are all Chawkandi regulars. Most had their debut shows at the gallery and today these seasoned and talented mid-career artists are widely acknowledged as painters, printmakers and multidisciplinary artists.

An exhibition covers drawings by mid-career artists that encompass a variety of realist, abstract, modernist and post-modernist approaches

Audiences familiar with their art may view the Chawkandi drawings in the same light but perhaps this would be a limiting experience. As an exhibition, “Markings” reveals distinctive bodies of work that are as diverse as the artists are innovative. While some artists emphasised feelings, thought and knowledge as the essential components of an artwork, others focused on the materials themselves with an equal degree of concentration.

In contemporary art, distinctions between painting and drawing, printmaking and even sculpture have become blurred. A new language of the visual arts has emerged based on a wider scope of expression for each of its disciplines, on new relationships among them and on the use of technological means.

In the Chawkandi exhibition, drawings, traditional form, the literal and the representative came out well in R.M. Naeem’s sepia figure study, as well as Anwar Saeed’s illustrative content. The pictorial and descriptive nature of the drawings was conventional and easy on the eyes. Waseem Ahmed’s ‘Sorrowful angels’ was easily relatable as well. His two Grecian figures with brushes in hand, mournfully contemplating a plaque with abstract markings, articulate the artistic dilemma of being caught between representational art and abstraction.

Drawings that originate from reflection rather than observation require thoughtful viewing. In Meher Afroz’s ‘Gohar-i-Nayab’, graphite and silver on paper drawing, there is an intense emotive state with a heavy layering of strokes and tonal gradations made with pencil marks, rubbing, scratching and overlapping. In this simplistic drawing technique there is a consonance between stroke strength, monochromatic variation and the expressiveness of an idea.

In modern art when the art object was dematerialised, drawing became a way of recording an action or an intellectual statement. It became the medium of choice, alongside writing, for expressing art as an idea. Muhammed Ali Talpur is another artist whose drawing centralised on erasure of content. His art emerges from the deconstruction of the formal aspects of line and calligraphic space.

Ali Kazim’s rambling liner forms in pencil on Japanese tissue relate to an organic visualisation of an idea. Originally a fine art painter, he now thinks and draws with the sensibility of a sculptor. This expression relates to contemporary drawing as autonomous, less connected to process, and informed by other disciplines.

For painters such as Khadim Ali and Aisha Khalid whose art practice is bound to a rigorous miniature regimen, loose spontaneous drawing is the wellspring of creativity. It enables ideas to germinate by relaxing the mind and hand. Muhammed Zeeshan’s arduous laser-scored images of popular political figures is drawing with the aid of technology. The artist’s proficiency in basic drawing is integral to this exercise.

Naiza Khan’s drawings are complex and need to be unravelled in context to her spirit of inquiry. This probe enables her to straddle several mediums such as the moving image, print and oil painting simultaneously. Afshar Malik’s interdisciplinary art practice with paint, print and ceramics has enabled him to invent a linearity that mimics the drawn line in varied media. His work also defies categorisation and easy access. Errant lines made in the margins as testers are not discarded by Imran Qureshi. He incorporates them in his work to enliven the surface.

The relevance of drawing has never been questioned but it is emerging as a very mobile medium both practically and conceptually. It is acquiring a freedom that defies categorisation. In order to understand how drawing works for each artist it is necessary to see the work in their proper perspective.

Maha Malik’s catalogue interviews reveal significant details of the participating artist’s oeuvres and their relationship with the act of drawing. This contextual framework is an interesting read and facilitates viewer comprehension. However, contemporary drawing as an independent discipline has yet to gain a foothold in our art milieu. Printmaking lags behind other disciplines in garnering appreciation. Similarly, the new drawing aesthetic will take a while in establishing itself.

“Markings — Contemporary Drawings and Questions of Space” is being shown in Chawkandi Art Gallery from November 8 to Novvember 20, 2016

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, November 13th, 2016