Drawing
On paper
Julia Emslander’s drawings are created in an immediate, physically present gesture: fast, raw, gestural, and powerful. Made with materials such as black ink, charcoal, graphite, oil pastels, and pastel crayons on paper, they move between drawing and action—traces of a performative moment that echoes in the line.
During a one-year study stay in Marseille, France, this drawing practice developed in the tension between urban exploration and physical trace-making. Inspired by Guy Debord’s concept of détour and his practice of wandering through the city (dérive), the works were created in direct response to the destroyed, weathered, and vibrant surfaces of the urban space. The drawing becomes a resonating body of urban materialities—a translation of fragment, rhythm, resistance.
In the broader context of performance and music, the drawings function as visual protocols of embodied perception. As in musical or physical improvisation, they are characterized by tempo, impulse, and repetition. They do not only document, they act: as autonomous graphic compositions, but also as source material for performative and installative developments in Emslander’s interdisciplinary practice.