On view in UNRULY edges are new oil paintings, drawings and brass reliefs that focus on the changes imposed on bodies of water throughout colonial history. The resulting images thread together issues of land, borders, the extraction of natural resources and the geometry of empires. For the artist, drawing is a conceptual tool, a way to observe, record and reflect. First presented at the 14th Gwangju Biennale, her large-scale charcoal drawings Unruly Edges I and Unruly Edges II see the entanglement of colonial history and hydro-infrastructure.
Depicted in Unruly Edges I is the expansion of Karachi Port in the late nineteenth century, a response to the need for circulation infrastructure amidst the growing demand for commodity production such as wheat and cotton for the British Empire. This resulted in the constantly changing coastlines of the Indian Ocean, pictured in Unruly Edges II as a seemingly shifting mass, a sea under construction.
Based on company paintings that flourished in the nineteenth under the patronage of the East India Company, these shapes are shadows cast by the past. These works ultimately question the conditions under which a landscape is formed. With watercolours and masking fluid, the artist creates layered forms that indicate the changing nature of landscapes and the borders of port cities. In many of her works, linear text is imposed over aerial views of devolving settlements, drawing out a sense of memory and denoting things that had been forgotten.
Tensions between nature and man-made structures are heightened through the pooling and spillage of pigments over the masking fluid that demarcates space. Viewers are guided to think about the compression of time and the impressions held between the layers of paint.
Many bridges and barrages built in British India during the nineteenth century required the construction of large yet precise parts to be shipped overseas as flat packs.
