This show returns to artists’ drawing boards

Shakuntala Kulkarni has always been preoccupied with the plight of urban women constrained by patriarchy, and their relationship with the spaces they inhabit. The Mumbai-based artist has resolutely explored this through cane armours, sculptures and other forms of installation art for decades. For her, the first step towards the creation of any work of art is drawing. Many have described entering her studio as stepping into a cave of drawings. The form keeps Kulkarni’s hand warm, and feels like riyaaz. The ongoing show, In the Making: Drawing, Refining, Revising, at Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai, offers a very different facet of her drawing practice.

In earlier shows such as Quieter than Silence (2023), one has seen her express her concerns through an array of figures on paper—female, androgynous. Here, the drawings here veer towards the abstract. There is a palpable raw energy to Kulkarni’s strokes—it feels as if one is privy to an intense drawing session. The five drypoint etchings on display in the show hail from the time she spent in Santiniketan, West Bengal, training under Somnath Hore, in the 1970s.

In the same show, Aditi Singh’s 12 watercolours, Happiness (2023), present a stark contrast with a certain fragility. Usually her works on paper are marked by an intense movement of ink and colour—featuring anatomy of waves in some and rhythms of nature in others. Here, one can see a soft meditative touch, as moss, lichen, flora and seedling from the forest floor of the Garhwal Himalayas just starting to make an appearance on paper. Both Kulkarni and Singh are part of this group show of 15 artists, which also includes other contemporary voices such as Varunika Saraf, Shilpa Gupta, Gigi Scaria, Ritesh Meshram, Reena Saini Kallat, and Mithu Sen.

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For each of these visual art practitioners, drawing is the essence of studio life. On show are sketchbooks, life studies, spot drawings, artist doodles that eventually lead to larger projects such as ambitious installations, sculptures, paintings or detailed drawings. For Shireen Gandhy, director, Chemould Prescott Road, the idea of the exhibition began organically with the thought of going back to the drawing board—sort of returning to the basics. The team at the gallery started looking at works hidden within artists’ studio archives. “The underlying thing about this exhibition is its very gentle approach to drawing,” she adds. “It gives each of us an insight into the artist’s practice and is a great exercise to know what is in the ‘kitchen in order to cook up a meal’. The show also gave the artists a chance to dig into their drawers and discover, often leading to a great eureka moment for us.”

As soon as you enter the space, the viewer is greeted with three sets of works by Shilpa Gupta, which look at ideas of belonging, borders, censorship and dissent that come with authoritative regimes. For sets—100 Hand-drawn Maps of India (2019), Drawing in the Dark (2016) and Nothing will go on Record (2016-23)—that address such powerful themes, the rendering of lines is so delicate, nearing invisibility. They beckon you closer to see the erasures that borders and censorship lead to. “When we started thinking of the show, the first call I made was to Shilpa. As a conceptual artist, drawings are of essence to her, and we discussed the various possibilities to showcase the work. This has resulted in a section in a wooden room to highlight her approach to drawing,” says Gandhy.

The other interesting body of work hails from Yardena Kurulkar, who is known for her sculptural practice that looks at the point of confrontations between life and death. In this show, her drawing suggests the death of the marker and features architectural lines that move from page to page—relentless and continuous in their flow. They start as dark and robust, eventually fading away. “There is something so poetic about these lines, and the power of not giving up till the ink runs out,” elaborates Gandhy.

Just like Kulkarni, artist Dhruvi Acharya also showcases some of the older prints, dating back to 2000, from her studio. Though not a printmaker, the artist experimented with stone lithographs, which has “served them over the years in their continued pursuit of drawing,” states the exhibition note. Then there is Until you backspace by Mithu Sen, in which she creates a personal narrative around the human body, everyday objects and ephemera through a unique grid-like structure. “For an artist like Mithu—whether she does performance or language-based work—the beginning is always drawing. Her pinprick drawings are a testimony to that,” adds Gandhy.

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In the Making also showcases the various forms that the ‘first drawing’ takes for artists, who work with sculpture and video. For instance, sculptor Ritesh Meshram starts with a paper-cut maquette, which eventually leads to a final sculpture. In the show, the team has presented both the maquette and the finished stainless steel sculpture, Birth of a Flower (2024), allowing a viewer to see the evolution of the work. Desmond Lazaro also takes you on a journey through his studio practice, as he showcases the initial drawings featuring mathematical calculations of solar and lunar movements. It is the process of selecting the works in collaboration with the artists that has been exciting for the team at Chemould. “To be able to pick within the vast expanse of practice has been very exciting for us,” says Gandhy.

At Chemould Prescott Road till 3 September, Monday to Saturday, 10am-6pm.