Drawing for Our Lives

Informed both by rupture and reciprocity, drawing constitutes a haptic space of transition and, because gesture outwards is not only about the “I exist”  but the “I exist in relation to someone else,” drawing is a form of intimacy, as much as of conversation. Catherine de Zegher, 2010

With its potential for intimacy and vulnerability, and links to process and the body, drawing has been central to feminist art. In this session inspired by Drawing Room’s exhibition ‘The Time of Our Lives’ we will read from key feminist critical and curatorial texts on drawing, alongside the words of artists. Texts foreground how artists have used drawing to document and witness, as well as to resist and potentially heal from, painful experiences and historic legacies. They prompt discussion about drawing’s potential to generate “radically inclusive aesthetics” that stimulate “a global feminist politics of solidarity across differences” (Karen Kurczynski, 2023).

Readings

Together we will read selections from critical works:

• Catherine de Zegher, ‘A Century Under the Sign of Line: Drawing and Its Extension (1910-2010),’ 2010, and ‘Drawing as Binding/Bandage/Bondage: Eva Hesse Drawing,’ 2014

• Karen Kurczynski: ‘Drawing in the 1990s: historical revisions and phantom visions’, 2023.

• Marsha Meskimmon and Phil Sawdon, ‘Approaching: drawing near,’ in Drawing Difference: Connections between Gender and Drawing, London: IB Tauris, 2016

We will also read the words of ‘The Time Of Our Lives’ artists  Sonia Boyce, Sutapa Biswas, Jade de Montserrat, Claudette Johnson,  Lizzy Rose, Monica Ross, and Soheila Sokhanvari, expressed in their own writing as well as in exhibition curator Jacqui McIntosh’s catalogue essay. Reflections on drawing by additional artists Phoebe Boswell and Tania Kovats will further enhance discussions.

There is no need to read texts in advance as we will do so together, out loud, during the evening. Readings will be circulated to participants in advance.

Register here

Image

Installation view, Jade de Montserrat, The Time of Our Lives, Drawing Room, London, 2024

Photo: BJDeakin Photography

Image Description

A photograph of colourful banners, hanging from the ceiling, covered in white hand-written text against abstract patterned shapes, with the following phrases" "Between the legs;" Not to be made into the mule of the world" and "And aint I a woman.?"

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