Weaving a thread between contemporary drawing and nineteenth-century Company paintings, Drawing Space: Contemporary Indian Drawings maps the intimate historical connection between Britain and India. In the early nineteenth-century, Company paintings forged a new relationship between Indian artists and their colonial patrons, the East India Company.

The drawn line was traditionally used as a means of defining social and physical space; this publication explores how it has become a device for negotiating space in ways that are self-empowering.

Bringing together three of India’s most innovative contemporary artists – Sheela Gowda, N.S. Harsha and Nasreen Mohamedi – Drawing Space contains specially commissioned essays, interviews and diary extracts, providing not only an art-historical background of the work, but also personal insights into the creative processes of the three artists.

Published on occasion of the exhibition Drawing Space, co-produced by Iniva and Beaconsfield in collaboration with the Victoria & Albert Museum.