This is Lala Rukh’s own language, a constellation of calligraphic form, minimalism and symbolic writing.
Lala developed a notational system through her training in Islamic calligraphy and her close involvement with musical traditions from across the Indian subcontinent. Her drawings reflect the live quality of performed music, indexing sonic ruptures and melodic sequences as a graphic sensibility. Her works look to build a stop-motion animation upon the percussive scheme of a Hindustani classical ‘taal’ called ‘rupak,’ which has a seven-beat structure. Drawing turns into movement, rendering the expansion of the beat in time and creating a diagrammatic visual relationship with the pulsation of an instrument.
The visual elements that accrue on her page are often particle-sized, yet they transact on multiple scales. By drawing spaces, she charts horizons, drifting between sight and non-sight and expansion and restraint; her pared-down vocabulary seems almost to have its own agency, often exposing a hidden choreography of cyphers in her scores.
About the Artist
Lala Rukh taught for 30 years at Punjab University, Department of Fine Art and the National College of Arts where she set up the Masters in Visual Art Programme in the year 2000. After retiring from teaching, she devoted her time to activism and her studio in Lahore.
Lala Rukh’s work was exhibited at Jameel Arts Centre from November 11, 2018, to February 9, 2019.
About the Publisher
Grey Noise, a contemporary art gallery, has an impressive portfolio of artists with a focus on work from South Asia, the Middle East and Europe. The gallery aims to give emerging and established artists a platform for their projects while engaging in dialogue and discussion with the international art community. With its network of curators, galleries, art fairs and museums worldwide, Grey Noise is ideally placed to share new and often experimental streams of thought in art and culture.