The clean, precise lines of Nasreen Mohamedi expand out of one drawing to meet the lines of the adjacent drawing. A cage is formed; the gaps between the grids grow smaller and smaller. A gasp at the momentary threat of asphyxiation, and then the lines recede to the limits of the frame. Now celebrated as one of the most significant artists to emerge in post-Independence India, Mohamedi’s work is a haunting engagement with abstraction. The retrospective of her oeuvre, after being exhibited at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art in Delhi and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, is currently one of the inaugural exhibitions of the Met Breuer New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s newly-acquired building devoted to modern and contemporary art.

Mohamedi’s retrospective is part of the institutional efforts of museums — such as Museo Reina Sofia and the Met — to seek out alternative narratives to the Western canon of modernity by exploring newer geographical coordinates, art-historically speaking. The minimalism of Mohamedi’s works and its visual semblance to that of the American abstract expressionist Agnes Martin, have made it easier for the Karachi-born artist to become part of this exploration. In the catalogue Nasreen Mohamedi: Waiting is a Part of Intense Living , curator Roobina Karode and art historians Geeta Kapur, Deepak Ananth, and Andrea Giunta draw speculative lineages linking Mohamedi to the drawings of Henri Michaux, the writings of Albert Camus, and the poetry of Rumi. It is, however, her kinship to VS Gaitonde that is most insightful. Gaitonde had a retrospective of his works at the Guggenheim New York in 2014-15.

Between her stints studying abroad, Mohamedi spent time with Gaitonde and others from the Progressive Artists’ Group at the Bhulabhai Desai Memorial Institute, Mumbai. There is little visual similarity in the works of both artists — Gaitonde explores the possibilities of texturing colour, while Mohamedi’s graphite lines follow their determined course on pale paper. Yet, both seem to be dealing with silence. Gaitonde’s is an immersive silence — colours bloom, brush strokes drift, forms manifest; his is an affirmative cosmic silence. On the other hand there’s nothing peaceful about the muteness of Mohamedi’s unwavering line brought about by the anguish of a quivering hand — the artist suffered from Huntington’s disease, a neurodegenerative disorder that affects muscular movements and that led to her premature death in 1990, at the age of 53.

Even though Mohamedi’s drawings are visibly grids, the lines are seismographic in their essence. The turmoil of a world being shaken is ironically made evident in the forced steadiness of the line. In her pocket-sized notebooks, she creates a different grid by neatly blackening much of her text. One wonders what was written on the page marked June 6 that all of it needed to be hidden. Her silence is then one of erasure, a suppression of a voice/s. We sense it through the seeming impersonality of the lines; when some of her lines dart upwards they bring us relief as they appear to be lines of flight.

Mohamedi’s later work (’80s) consists of multi-planar grids that float in the ecru space of paper. They still carry the resonance of the blotched, webbed landscape of her ‘Untitled’ (1960). But it is as if the lines have found a way to exist by being unrelated and unfettered to other lines and frames. They exude a sense of calmness but are less impactful than the claustrophobic grids of the ’60s.

The retrospective at the Met Breuer also includes Mohamedi’s photographs that follow the drama of architectural and natural lines — the zigzag shadow cast by a gutter, the curve made on the shore by the waves claiming territory. They share the same pale tints and minimalism as her drawings, making her practice in both media appear seamless.

A drawing is always relegated as a draft no matter how sophisticated and finished it is. This preparatory character is compounded in Mohamedi’s case by the fact that she never titled or dated her works. There are a few exceptions when the artist has mischievously curved the edge of a drawing to sign in block letters in the bottom right of the page. Mohamedi’s body of work is then not about an artist leaving behind a legacy of artworks but a search, a silent quest to be an unfettered line.

The exhibition ‘Nasreen Mohamedi’ is on view till June 5 at the Met Breuer, New York.

Blessy Augustine is an art critic based in New York

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