Drawing Praxis

Thinking through drawing  enables new ideas to grow. Below, I will look at a few ways that drawing, in particular mapping, has helped my research. I discuss my image-based praxis in: How to Do Social Research with Drawing pp.99-109.

Mapping

I find map-making a useful means of return. Maps of art displays enable me to recall the artworks that my thumbnail sketches relate to. While the queer map of South East London facilitates travelling back in time. Maps also allow us to enter the place, turning the map like we would our feet, as we move through the miniaturised world.  

Drawing out stories

Unlike photography, which captures what is in front of the lens, drawing enables us to picture things we cannot see.

During Covid-19 I interviewed museum professionals online for my forthcoming book with Nirmal Puwar and Siobhan McGuirk Outsider insiders: Gender agendas and race in UK and South African museums. In order to give vision to what the interviewees said, I made drawings about the stories that they told me. The images brought their experiences closer during this period of isolation. It also inspired me to chart examples of practice that increased inclusion in museums, leading to the collaborative art project Museum with Walls, in Re/locating Cultures of Equality 2021. The images here represent: street homeless people accessing museums; young scientists on a camping trip and the border-crossing Migrant Museum-MuMi.

Collborative map-making

Inspired by David Medalla’s A Stitch in Time I purchased a long sheet of cotton, which I invited people to draw and sew contemporary issues into. The cloth-based map in the photo, is from a workshop in Studio 3 in 2022 with University of Kent students. Near the end of Covid-19, this commoning felt vital.

On a five-day drawing retreat at Goldsmiths, I asked students to draw into the environment using the material it gave them. Here, they capture sunlight as it falls through the trees.