Degree Show  I  Nottingham Trent University  I  Nottingham, UK
2011
Hair, Ink and Glue on Wall

The site-specific work was made during my MA degree show at the Nottingham Trent University, UK in 2011, where I exhibited alongside the other graduating students. At the time, my practice was primarily concerned with lines through the process of mark making on paper, using materials such as oil pastels, pen and hair.

During a conversation with my mentor at NTU, he facilitated me to realise my inner dialogue through a series of rigorous questions to examine and critically articulate the reasoning behind my decision to move drawing from a paper onto the wall, and especially behind the need to be drawn directly on the site itself. These inquiries made me recognize how a sheet of paper defines an image through its edge or boundary, something I wished to take away from my drawing. Thereby leaving just the material, the viewer, and the space itself.

Since it was a site-specific work, I started early, when the exhibition space was still empty and relatively static. I still recall how the light rays entered through the glass ceiling in the exhibition space. The architecture, however, soon began to alter- visually and physically, as students arrived to set up their works. As the space started to move, I repeatedly redrew and adapted in response to these changes. With the students continuously coming back and forth to view and set up the artworks again and again, it transformed the space. It marked a turning point in self as it invoked within my mind a set of new possibilities ahead, especially, “What if we could move into the drawing?!” The work was therefore not created in isolation but rather was developing in tandem with the physical changes, as the space itself was gradually ‘becoming’. Even after returning from the UK, this experience stayed with me and informed within me a profound shift towards the understanding of architecture, later leading me towards the exploration of ‘Drawing in Space’ series where I began to introspect what if the drawing could move beyond the limits of the paper and extend directly into the architectural space.