isiting an artist’s studio before an exhibition is a unique and unforgettable experience. Here, one encounters not only the work ready to be packed, dispatched and displayed, but also the artist’s incomplete pieces, unresolved ideas and aborted projects. This scenario - comprising scribblings, postcards, journals, sketchbooks and relevant reading material - provides a context to comprehend the concept, the reason and the process. The studio also leads to an intimacy and frankness not possible in a public space, such as a gallery. Thus, being at an artist’s studio presents a unique opportunity to catch works in the making; it also reveals a creative individual’s life in progress from various vantage points and changes the perspective on their production.

While viewing the latest drawings of Jamil Baloch — stones rendered in graphite on paper — I started to see stones everywhere in his surroundings: in small sculptures (of shrouded women clustered together and in two mountain ranges constructed with different materials) and in unidentifiable terracotta forms; even in certain sections of human figures drawn on paper that resemble the grainy surfaces of unhewn stones. In that sense, the choice of paper, especially the textured Arches, to portray a man’s anatomy has added another dimension to the artist’s aesthetics.

Jamil Baloch has created work in multiple mediums and techniques, i.e. drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture and video (as well as a performance piece in 2003 at the First Vasl International Artists Residency, Gadani, Karachi). What emerges as the most arresting element in all of these excursions and experiments is the artist’s connection with material, and/ or his obsession with physicality. In this respect, he is not alone. A majority of image-makers rely on their hands as much as their eyes to know, explore and fabricate the world. Take the example of painting, the so-called two-dimensional object. It, too, evokes a feeling of tactility, either through thin layers, uneven textures or thick impasto; so much so that some surfaces do not seem painted, but built with semi-stiff matter.

The sensation of a surface and the touch of a tool is not particular to a visual artist. In a conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist, the Italian philosopher Umberto Eco regrets the increasing fashion for digital devices as the sole means of writing, in place of traditional pen and paper. He reflects: “The art of writing teaches us to control our hand-eye coordination. It makes us compose a sentence in our head before we write it. The resistance of pen and paper slows us down and makes us think.”

They are enduring substances that have witnessed the passage of time, the flow of life, the persistence of injustice and the traces of victims; and that will remain there, silent yet constant.

Baloch exploits this relationship, or tension, between the tool and the surface, and the shift that takes place as a result, in his new work on paper (part of the solo exhibition Saggh — Patience, being held from December 18 to January 11 at White Wall Gallery, Lahore). Executed with graphite pencils, every image entails a prominently uneven, stone-like texture. Yet, seen as a series, each of these drawings appears like an individual portrait — separate and specific, distinct from the general categorisation of the substance. One may associate them with human faces, as every form depicts an unmatched set of cuts, creases, grooves and ridges, hence unmistakable identities. Looking at Baloch’s drawings, one begins to notice the importance entangled in things that lie ordinary, mundane, neglected and abundant.

The stones can be portraits for another reason, since Jamil Baloch has collected his references or models from different sites, including his hometown in Balochistan and Lahore, his city of residence and work. Originally of varying scales, Baloch brought them down to a singular measurement when capturing them on white sheets. This process may be compared to proceedings at a passport office, where every person’s face is recorded in a regular posture, against the same background and at identical dimensions. Despite these efforts at standardisation, people retain diverse features, characters and personalities; much as in every language there exist multiple words for stone, such as, in English, pebble, gravel, rock and boulder, but, as observed by Jacques Derrida, no word or expression can fully replace another within a single tongue.

A language is but a system of signs. So is the language of picture-making. In that light, if one analyses the visuals created by Jamil Baloch, these are more than apparent pictures of stones. They signify content of another nature: unbending, upright and facing hardship; mainly because all (except one) of the drawings contain stones in vertical formats, much like a standing human being. Alongside close observation of mass, confirming the artist’s strong facility for replicating reality, these stones reveal the presence of light through sharp, stark and deep shadows. Some, due to their conical tops, allude to mountains, in most cases the origin and reservoir of the material, but, in contrast to naturally formed pieces, these shapes are cut and extracted from their original sources.

Stones, repeated in Baloch’s work, offer something more than a depiction of his fascination with, or familiarity with, the material. Trained as a sculptor, he has produced work across scales and substances, ranging from monumental human figures to small heads and from fibreglass sculptures to plaster casts and terracotta objects. His stylised paintings are often concerned with the manipulation of material, as was evident in works from his student years, particularly the large mixed-media pieces on board. The latest drawings are also a form of paying homage to the black graphite of the pencil and the whiteness of paper.

Though the two are contrasting colours, in Baloch’s art they share a single quality: roughness. It is a coarseness that suggests another, perhaps the real, content of the work. Jamil Baloch not only belongs to Balochistan but is also aware of its literary legacy, cultural geography and political history, elements that appear in his art in varying layers. For him, the recent work does not depict stone, but Saggh, a word that means patience in the Balochi language, but also sounds close to sang, the Urdu and Persian term for stone, which likewise connotes hardness. It symbolises the rebellious nature of generations from that land, as Baloch recalls, in conversation, the iconic Baloch leader Nawab Khair Bakhsh Marri and his comrades, who believed in the strength of persistent struggle, resistance and confrontation rather than compromise.

The past of the province is stained with blood, military operations and central rule since the 1970s. The situation may have changed but pockets of dissent and reports of disappearances remain. Against this background, Jamil Baloch’s stones are not merely bits of rock, building material or minerals arranged on the table of a cosy house; they are enduring substances that have witnessed the passage of time, the flow of life, the persistence of injustice and the traces of victims and that will remain there, silent yet constant. These steadfast forms convey a continuing narrative of confrontation, conflict and challenge.

As the recent body of work, in its abstract sense, may be imbued with political meaning, it also recalls Jamil Baloch’s entry at the First Karachi Biennale in 2017, which was composed of non-representational imagery. There was a set of white forms on the ground that, upon closer examination, emerged as body bags trampled by armoured vehicles. Like that powerful visual, the current drawings of stones contain concealed content.

The writer is a visual artist, an art critic, a curator and a professor at the School of Visual Arts and Design, Beaconhouse National University, Lahore. He can be contacted at [email protected].