Artist in Me series

Shabd–Nishabd introduces participants to asemic writing as -  a visual and bodily practice, where marks resemble text but are freed from fixed linguistic meaning. The workshop creates a safe, open space for participants to explore emotions, memories, and sensations such as grief, joy, fear, longing, and fatigue through intuitive gestures, without the pressure to explain, narrate, or resolve them into language.

Asemic writing is a practice introduced to Rafooghar by Brazilian artist Lia Petrelli, who describes it as the 'language of gestures'

Through stitching and mark-making, participants are encouraged to work with the hand and body rather than the withintellect, allowing silence, ambiguity, and incompleteness to hold meaning. This approach finds a quiet resonance with Tyeb Mehta’s artistic language, where gesture, tension, and form carry deep emotional weight without relying on the narrative. Like Mehta’s lines and fractured forms, the marks created here speak through presence rather than explanation.

The workshop invites participants to slow down, sit with sensation, and engage in making as an act of presence rather than production. In doing so, it echoes Tyeb Mehta’s belief in the expressive power of restraint where what remains unsaid, broken, or unresolved becomes the site of intensity and truth. The resulting work becomes a personal visual language that does not need to be read or understood by others.

Participant Takeaways:

●      Develop a personal, non-verbal mark-making vocabulary

●      Experience drawing and stitching as processes led by the hand and body

●      Reflect on how gesture, pause, and silence can communicate emotion

●      Understand parallels between asemic practices and Tyeb Mehta’s use of form and tension

●      Leave with a visual record that functions as a private language, legible primarily to the maker

●      Explore simple stitching techniques and take home a finished asemic writing artwork

Artist Bio:

The workshop is facilitated by artist Shivangi Singh along with the women artists of Rafooghar – The House that Mends a community space in New Delhi where women living on the margins, and those who have faced discrimination and social exclusion, gather to find space and time for sukoon (peace) and fursat (leisure) through the medium of stitching and textiles.

While you’re here, we invite you to also explore KNMA’s ongoing exhibition TYEB MEHTA Bearing Weight (with the lightness of being).

Image Credit:

Asemic writing is a practice introduced to Rafooghar by Brazilian artist Lia Petrelli, who describes it as the “language of gestures.”