GROUP EXHIBITION

Drawn from Practice II unfolds in two physical manifestations simultaneously at Experimenter’s twin spaces in Kolkata. At Experimenter Ballygunge Place, disorder, notations, and initial ideas animate the works on view by Ayesha Sultana, Bhasha Chakrabarti, Prabhavathi Meppayil, Sanchayan Ghosh, Seher Shah & Sreshta Rit Premnath bringing these practices together through preliminary thought, revealing a deeply personal, yet central framework of deliberation, resistance and process rooted in each practice.

A fertile ground for experimentation and testing the boundaries of thought, drawing is often the only initial scaffolding on which practices rely as a point of departure. Drawing is traditionally viewed as markings, notations and sketches often on paper or personal diaries, but the influence of drawing and the scope of drawing that Drawn from Practice II explores goes well beyond the physical act of drawing and enters the realm of drawing as thought, as form and as practice. For Ayesha Sultana (b. 1984 in Jashore, Bangladesh, currently lives and works in Atlanta USA), drawing is a bodily expression, whether in the form of counting breath, measuring distance and movement manifested in repeated constant marking of graphite on paper. Sultana often refers to her work as a ‘verb’. The act of mark-making and repetition is an essential aspect of her practice. Her mediums undergo phases where they maybe spliced, fragmented and layered, processes that are explicitly visible in the works on view. Bhasha Chakrabarti’s (b. 1991 in Honolulu, USA, currently lives and works in New Haven, USA) practice is rooted in acts of mending and repair, but also in text, sound and folklore addressing conversations around race, gender and power. She presents a series of works on paper made with discarded denim and indigo, alongside handwritten translations, blocks of indigo and shredded denim and notes from her diary that provide an insight into Chakrabarti’s direction of thinking and making.

Drawn From Practice pursues the idea of drawing as a fundamental notation within multiple cross disciplinary practices. In contemporary visual arts, within an albeit narrow definition, drawing is imagined to be ideas that artists put on paper, or as structural scaffoldings based upon which new work is begun, or a complete work in itself. Prabhavathi Meppayil’s (b. 1965 in Bangalore, India, lives and works in Bangalore, India) work is as much steeped in an ancestral artisanal practice as it is in exploration of space, form and materiality. Works made by fine impressions of thinnam or enmeshed copper wire on masterfully gessoed surfaces punctuate the gallery, their shapes and sizes drawing reference particularly from the details of the architecture of the space, sizes of ventilation openings and floor tiles, underscoring how spatially, Meppayil’s minimalist practice unfolds.