Objects from the Deep

2017 - ongoing project

I began to think about the depths we search to find the shipwreck, to find love, the objects we carry across the ocean to other lands.

Objects from the Deep began in 2015, and the drawings unravelled slowly. Images submerged in our memory often surface in different forms.

Beached is still quite elusive to me, but I want the viewer to read it as an embodied being, both whale and vessel traversing the ocean, beached or marooned on land. The vessel morphs into something fleshy, reminiscent of the whale. And within the dark space, the abyss contained in the boat, is a liquid, the ocean.

‘It's a mammalian vessel in which two massive objects traversing the deep, two opposites, coalesce: the organic whale and the industrial ship.’ (Ananya Kabir).

These conceptual drawings reflect on the sedimented nature of objects in the depths of the ocean. The intimate pull between object, material and nature fuses and erases the differences of place and identity and becomes a site of confluence and transformation.

Text by Naiza Khan

Beached, Conte and graphite, 70 x 100 cm, 2017
Rock, Conte, graphite and screen print on paper, 71 x 100 cm, 2017
Shipwreck, Charcoal, conte and graphite, 70.75 x 100 cm, 2017
Left-to-die, Conte, graphite and screen print, 70 x 100 cm, 2017
Cities on the Sea No1 (Objects from the Deep), Conte, graphite and screen print on Magnani paper, 70  x 100 cm, 2016
Cities on the Sea No2 (Objects from the Deep), Conte, graphite, charcoal and screen print on Magnani paper, 70 x 100 cm, 2016 
Blessed Conquest (Objects from the Deep), Charcoal, conté and graphite on Magnani paper, 70 x 100 cm, 2016
Cloud (Objects from the Deep), Charcoal and screen print on Magnani paper, 70 x 100 cm, 2016
Vessel (Objects from the Deep) Charcoal, conte and screen print on paper 70.75 x 100 cm, 2017 
What emerged from the Debris (Objects from the Deep), Charcoal, conte and graphite on paper, 70.75 x 100 cm, 2017 
Geode Split (Objects from the Deep), Conte, graphite, charcoal and screen print on paper, 70 x 100 cm 2017 
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