Hundred Easy Questions (Drawing Table Installation)

The project that I executed with the FRFF Micro grant is an extension of my larger body of work titled ‘Hundred Easy Questions’ which I have been developing since last semester. The ongoing project consists of multimedia installations consisting of video/sonic works, sculptures and drawings. As part of the project, I began to look at 19th century colonial warships, specifically the ones that were the backbone of the British colonial empire. For this project, I focused on the world’s first steam powered warship named ‘Gorgon’ which is a Greek term for ‘a thing that turns anything it gazes upon, into a stone’. HMS Gorgon was launched by the British Empire in 1837, and its first target was the Palestinian village ‘Akra’ where it killed more than a thousand people. This ship was one of the many major agents ushered in the long history of colonization and extraction dating back to the nineteenth century.

I started doing extensive research on this warship and began to collect blueprints of the ship from various online archives. I was drawn to these engineering blueprints upon realizing that they represented the first step toward destruction—plans that materialized into missions of warfare. As a trained architecture draftsperson, I used my technical skills to bring this critique into focus through the medium of drawing and multimedia sculptural installation. As I was tracing and drafting these blueprints, I also began researching the blueprints of the SpaceX colony ship that is supposed to ‘colonize Mars’. The final project focused on drawing a linear trajectory of the Western quest for domination across time and geographies using the the blueprints of both the 19th century colonial warships as well the 21st century colonial warships, coupled with drawings and sculptural interventions performing a humorous critique of imperial power.

The sound component of the installation consisted of a bluetooth speaker installed beneath a drafting board. I recorded myself drawing the blueprints, and the sound had an almost brash quality to it as I was drawing lines on paper. The sound perfectly encapsulated the violence inherent to these blueprints of colonial warships by translating the physical act of drafting into a visceral experience.

This project was made possible with support from the Frank-Ratchye Further Fund Microgrant #2025-036. Additional images can be found here.