Detail: A solo exhibition of Nasreen Mohamedi’s diary pages, drawings and photographs which combine Western influences such as Paul Klee and Kasimir Malevich with Islamic architectural forms and a South Asian sensibility, resulting in an intensely personal body of work. Early drawings often suggest plants and trees, before the artist focused on creating variations around the grid format; later works present free-floating geometric forms that evoke futuristic, mechanical or architectural devices.
These abstract forms were often developed in intricately detailed diaries, written throughout the artist’s life, where the written word morphs into personalised symbols, grids and diagonals. The artist traces or weaves regular patterns in her drawings, as if mapping a pulse or internal flow onto external phenomena. Her tightly cropped photographs seek out elemental forms such as the repetitive patterns found in the sea or landscapes as well as in the constructed world, in architecture and urban design.