In the first term, I mapped a prayer room, using the organisation of the prayer rugs to array a grid onto the plan of the room and then translating the colours and materials of the room’s surfaces into a series of pixel-like pastel drawings.
This snippet was what I chose to explore for the first week of the iterations brief, specifically a reductive method of drawing objects. I was keen to return to pastels as well, partly because I wanted to get better ‘acquainted’ with them as a material.
These iterations were framed by Walter Benjamin’s idea of an object’s ‘aura’ — experiencing, seeing or feeling something from a distance, without actually seeing it. Distance is key here and it counters our modern preoccupation with seeing things perfectly and close-up. The intentions of these iterations were to explore the aura of things, rather than perfectly reproduce them, thereby allowing for an openness in their perception and interpretation. There was also something in the juxtaposition of the grids (technically rigid but imperfect themselves being hand drawn) with the fuzziness of the pastels.
There were different sets of drawings, starting with a plastic bouquet, followed by objects in my room, still lifes, the view from my window, more bouquet abstractions, flowers found in my room, letterforms and text. With each set, the size of the pixel grid decreases, adding detail to the image and rendering objects differently each time.
