Integer Study (drawing from life) is a portfolio of 365 drawings recorded daily in an intimate journal since the beginning of 2021. Jitish Kallat has frequently marked the passage of time in his work with drawings that record natural elements, registering images from descending raindrops or reading wind-patterns with fire. Kallat has been developing a “vocabulary of studio rituals” that explore aesthetic questions mediated by nature. He characterizes these rituals as “self-imposed artistic constraints” that subtly transform his intuitions and perceptions.

In Integer Study (drawing from life), three sets of freighted numbers, paired with a timestamp representing a specific moment in the day, give rise to a thought-form. These three integers comprise the algorithmically estimated global human population at that instant, along with estimations of births and deaths that have occurred up to that point in the day. The numbers, and the images they evoke, are abstractions that create a triangulation of life by mapping the dimensions of birth, death, and time. These works traverse a spectrum of inquiries, from existential questions that transition into ecological ones; progressing from reflections on climate and extinction to considerations of evolution and decay.