DRAWINGS
Aesthetics of Indifference
How Many Masks Wear We? A collage of fragmented labours.
Year: 2022
Medium: Digital
Dimensions: —
Aesthetics of Indifference interrogates the multiplicity of roles, identities, and performances embedded in architectural labour through a collage of fragmented acts. Inspired by the question “How Many Masks Wear We?”, the drawing explores the layering of detachment, repetition, and the dissolution of authorship in the production of spatial constructs.
The composition unfolds as an assemblage of fractured gestures—architectural elements, traces of manual and digital processes, and remnants of constructed environments. These pieces are neither fully autonomous nor entirely cohesive; they hover between articulation and erasure, suggesting a simultaneous engagement and disinterest, presence and absence. By embracing indifference as a generative aesthetic, the drawing resists a singular, authoritative composition, instead allowing for a reading of multiplicity, ambiguity, and estrangement in architectural representation.
Methodology
This work emerges through an iterative and layered process of speculative assembly, incorporating a range of digital and analogue techniques:
Collage of Fragmented Labours – The drawing is composed of disjointed architectural components, sketches, textures, and digital manipulations, layered and reassembled through a non-hierarchical process. Fragments are sourced, duplicated, and juxtaposed to challenge conventional notions of authorship and coherence.
Masking & Obfuscation – The idea of the ‘mask’ is explored through selective erasure, overlay, and distortion. Elements are concealed or partially revealed, reinforcing themes of indifference and detachment.
Ambiguous Spatial Readings – Scale, orientation, and perspective are deliberately destabilised, creating shifting relationships between figure and ground, object and void. This produces a spatial condition that remains unresolved, resisting immediate categorization.
Material & Representational Hybridisation – The drawing integrates hand-drawn gestures, digital overlays, and algorithmic manipulations to create a field of dis-placed moments. This hybridity amplifies the sense of estrangement in architectural representation.
Repetitive Processes & Mechanical Iteration – Elements are duplicated, multiplied, and reconfigured, mimicking acts of labor that are simultaneously productive and indifferent. Repetition serves as both an aesthetic device and a conceptual strategy, questioning the role of agency in architectural making.
By assembling fragments without a predetermined hierarchy, Aesthetics of Indifference challenges the expectations of composition, authorship, and representation. It positions indifference not as an absence of meaning, but as a method of resistance—an aesthetic that allows for fluidity, multiplicity, and open-ended spatial speculation.