What is the relationship between drawing and writing, in the (re)learning of a native language?
This project documents the process of (re)learning my native language of Urdu, specifically through ‘khushkhati’ (handwriting). It is a set of drawings based on written exercises — termed ‘basic exercises’ in typical Urdu teaching materials — that are used to develop fluency and familiarity with the script and the visual forms that make up the language, now reimagined as tools for composition and image-making. The words included in these exercises are derived from a single YouTube tutorial series that was followed for the duration of the project, from which I was able to practice the knowledge and skills that allowed me to first draw, and then write the very words that eventually make up the set of drawings.
The set of drawings are, on the one hand, records of the development of my fluency in Urdu. However, by treating language as a ‘material’ that is both formal and communicative, the project aims to express the interdependence of drawing and writing in the formation of language, through forms and vague translations that are suggestive of the learning process itself. This relationship can be expressed in the following cyclical relationship:
…’drawing’ as ‘writing’ as ‘language’ as…
13 drawings. Pencil and marker on graph paper.
