Drawing has always been an artist’s most fundamental skill.
Traditionally, the teaching of any discipline under visual arts has heavily relied on its exercise as it allows the artist to grasp the surrounding reality and gather his or her thoughts. The advent of computers, scanners and other digital editing tools raised a concern that drawing would be sidelined into a marginal activity.
However, in the abundance of instantaneous digital imagery, the ability to draw, ironically, became a treasured skill and has been met with a new surge of appreciation.
In recent decades, artists both within Pakistan and abroad have ventured into the peripheries of drawing and employed their practice to challenge its definition. By doing so, drawing has now become an expanded, fluid field that continues to mould itself.
While some practitioners use traditional materials, others opt for unconventional tools and techniques that blur the threshold between drawing and other forms of art, such as video, photography or sculpting. This approach was once considered radical but has now become a common occurrence in many artists’ praxis.
Axis Mutatis was a recent exhibition at the Full Circle Gallery in Karachi that showcased the works of seven artists who went back to the basics and negotiated with what is undeniably a timeless and most primitive form of art.
Babar Moghal’s drawings illustrate a dystopian landscape that is void of any human presence. The sensitive pencil work and subtle definition obscure the expansive post-apocalyptic settings. The elements seep, meld and diffuse into each other, which facilitates the visuals to distance themselves from our otherwise familiar, observed reality. In doing so, the artist instils a sense of impermanence and constant transition in the viewers.
An exhibition of seven artists showcases the timeless, traditional charm of hand drawings...
The evanescent and ethereal nature of Moghal’s drawings stands in contrast to the enduring illustrations by Umaimah Mustafa Khan. The vigorous pen work and short, repetitive strokes reinforce the lucid quality in her drawings; she essentially teleports the viewers into an extraterrestrial realm.
Combined with tube-like capillaries, cellular structures and unidentifiable organisms, the works allude to a biological diagram on a microscopic level. By establishing a freakish arena, both artists seemingly capture their dreams and hallucinatory state of mind.
Maha Minhaj’s ink drawings are saturated with gestural brushwork and mark-making. For her, the drawings thrive in the void left in the negative spaces. The contours and shapes starkly resemble the human form and human possessions. The impressions and imprints record the vestiges of both physical and spiritual human existence and human contact.
Similar to Minhaj, Jovita Alvares also utilises the interplay of negative and positive spaces and silhouette drawings to archive her observations. The minimal line drawings of human figures, architectural spaces, and plantations are assimilated by layering, to create a single image.
The works were created during quarantine and perceivably observed from a stationary vantage. A sense of confinement derives from the portrayal of various types of obstructions, such as barrier gates, walls, and barbed wires. The obstacles echo in the layering of translucent sheets that further conceal the complete image.
Manizhe Ali’s drawings address her identity and life experiences through her chosen imagery, on which she superimposes kaleidoscopic patterns. The layering with organic forms disrupts the methodical symmetry. Ali uses the pattern to warp the animal subjects and to evoke a feeling of kinetic disorientation.
Sana Nezam renders a winged female form with a blue ballpoint pen and is the only artist to use a colour besides black. Perhaps drawn from live observation, the figure resembles the remnants of the Victorian statues of angels and saintly persons that were once abundant in Karachi. The visual language in Nezam’s work is a nod to the dwindling practice of sketching on the go; when creative enthusiasts would sit before their subjects in public and draw on site.
Paul Mehdi Rizvi’s raw and tactile drawing uses resin, paint and tape to create a deliberate cacophony of materiality and textures. He exposes his process and employs a fluid spontaneity which, in its broader framework, is an institutional critique of how art is taught and is perceived.
The majority of the artworks were created in 2020 and, unsurprisingly, many artists chose to reflect on the uncertain climate and the introspection it triggered. The pandemic has coerced physical human existence into a cowering huddle, which made us realise that life is beyond one’s physical existence. It is a melange of our mental, emotional, psychological and physical perceptions and our learnings from them.
The artists have documented their observations and thoughts into surreal visuals that perhaps not only provide an escape into a mythical realm, but also seek a semblance of normality from the engulfing chaos where life seems to have become upended.g
“Axis Mutatis” was displayed at the Full Circle Gallery in Karachi from January 22, to February 05, 2021
Published in Dawn, EOS, February 14th, 2021