I draw, therefore I think: Emmie Nume | SOUTH SOUTH Platform

Experience the work of Emmie Nume alongside 60 artists across 29 countries from 28 galleries in their reflections on the relationship between drawing, the production of ideas and the evolutionary aspects of existence.

This drawing project is prompted by Charles Darwin’s 1837 sketch ‘Tree of Life’ in which he scribbled down a framework for his speculations about evolution in one of his first “transmutation notebook”. This intuitive drawing of an evolutionary tree is headlined by the words ‘I think’ and is a precursor to Darwin’s radical theory of evolution, common descent, differential survival and natural selection.

Kallat invites artists and audiences to consider if Darwin first wrote the words ‘I think’ and then proceeded to draw when words could not capture his emergent thoughts or if the drawing preceded the words; thus pointing to the bidirectional relationship between thought and drawing.