Swapnaa Tamhane’s probing drawings, combined with extracts from text messages, hold the viewer’s gaze directly. These drawings twist away from a documentarian impulse, or easy narrativization, as they appear alongside epistolary text. In the emphasized creases, roundness, and crevices, these sketches exceed the two-dimensionality of the page. In her careful practice of recording figures, vessels, and objects individually, Tamhane allocates space to historically anonymized Indian craftspeople. Their fingerprints in clay, stone, or bronze supersede the more obvious graphite marks of the drawings themselves. Juxtaposed alongside unedited text messages, these sketches allude to the diaristic experience of making art. Their highly personal content contrasts with the anonymity of the artists who made the represented artifacts. The viewer is left with a sense that craftspeople exceeded their fixed position, or the psychological and historical containers that they’ve been placed in, just as Tamhane’s past arrived unexpectedly in the present tense. - Emily Zuberec