The National College of Arts (NCA) held a series of drawings on Wednesday, December 14, where students displayed their collaborative art work based on collaborative styles. It is an age-old tradition to have multiple hands working on a single piece of artistic creation. This has been manifested in different forms in different regions of the world. In the 15th century during the Ottoman Empire there was the Nakkashane or studio where different artists worked on a single miniature painting.
In medieval Europe there were weaving industries where members of a weaver’s household would work on different areas of the same tapestry. In more recent times there were less rehearsed collaborations such as the surrealists’ game of Exquisite Corpse, which involved a single sheet of paper passed from artist to artist. Each contributed an impromptu image, which led to a strange amalgam at the end.
Keeping this rich tradition of collaborative work in mind, Dua Abbas, Wardha Shabbir, and Ali Asad Naqvi have attempted in the series of drawings displayed, a creative collaboration of their own. The pieces bear impressions of more than one set of hands, and more than one strain of thought. Contributing individually to a single work, yet trying to maintain a kind of anonymity at the same time to better facilitate the blending of three minds, the artists say that they found the process refreshing.
