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A Drawing hangs in the middle [PRACTICE-SHARING]


Junuka Deshpande, Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology (Bangalore, India)

 

 

In the existing curriculum for art and design, practice of drawing is considered fundamental, primarily as a tool to observe , to represent and to communicate. Drawing, also at times becomes a performative skill that is explored across tactile and digital formats. In my pedagogical practice with the undergraduate students of art and design I often felt the need to traverse across these limiting notions about drawing to explore the affective possibilities in the practice of drawing. In context of an increasingly digitised and haptic interactions with the surroundings, I decided to inflict upon myself, a routine with the hope of finding insights through practice.


This practice- presentation is based on a project that explored observation of a crossroad through drawing. The drawings are made from the same place on a sidewalk observing the same crossroad over 30 days. During this process, I tried to explore how a repetitive observation of a space and the outcome of the process creates and evokes a sense of connectedness and reflexive dialogue with the place and its elements- visible and invisible. This artistic experiment contemplates on the idea of divergent and emergent process where the drawing emerges in the moment, even though it can be envisioned early and interpreted in hindsight. My experiment considers the act of drawing as an embodied form of recording as opposed to drawing as an image-making (representational) exercise. This process of observation and drawing initiates an engagement with the existing spatial elements, arrangements, their interconnections and importantly, with the self. Along with the outward engagement and a dialogue with the space, the moment of drawing is both- the outcome of observation and an inward connection in the moment of making it. The tension between an immediacy in the moment of drawing and the reflectivity in the process of meaning-making of the drawings creates a parallel relationship between an immediate present and the immediate past. The empty space on the surface before drawing, therefore becomes a potential space to record moments from the space around and to remember the moments that are passing by. The work, in the form of drawings of various sizes aspires to present this two way engagement with the space. The work also gives me an opportunity to find critical moments in the records of time, memory and space. The drawing as an outcome hence, hangs in the middle between the moment of record and the moment of being, elusive and across.

 

Keywords: Drawing, Observation, moment, Immersion, Conversation


Biography
 I am an artist, academic, researcher and designer. My professional journey as a documentary film maker working with indigenous communities on matters of social and environmental justice led me to question and confront implicit notions of self and hierarchy embedded in creative-perceptive processes in the context of place. My practice as an artist and an educator centres repetitive and iterative image-making and image-construction as sense-making processes that progressively deepen one’s affective and epistemic engagement with place and people. My current interest is in discovering ways to understand self-reflexivity while engaging in such repetitive processes of observation and image-making through drawing, to manifest my relationship with the inner and outer world.