Friction Portraiture (method)

Friction portraiture is the method I developed to physically enact counter-legibility on the drawing surface. Rather than creating a smooth, unified portrayal, friction portraiture retains the resistance inherent in the drawing process: the stops and starts, the layered marks, the edits, the abrasion of pigment against paper. Friction becomes the material record of making—a tactile accumulation that resists the polished, resolved finish often associated with traditional portraiture.

In friction portraiture, the body is not rendered seamlessly. It is built through pressure, repetition, and interruption. The surface shows traces of the work that usually get hidden: the slow shifts of colour, the uneven buildup of graphite, the abrasion of erasing and re-marking. These physical tensions parallel the conceptual tensions of counter-legibility. While counter-legibility addresses how the world reads a body, friction portraiture addresses how I construct that body—holding the evidence of labour, duration, and refusal to produce a perfect, “readable” likeness.

Friction portraiture keeps the making visible. The drawing is not corrected into harmony. It stays unsettled enough to acknowledge the reality that identities shaped under pressure rarely arrive in the world without seams.