Sabba Khan, "Borders Broken, Edges Blurred."
In her introduction to Drawing Power, an anthology of comics contributed by women drawing around the theme of sexual violence, the writer Roxanne Gay describes her reliance on words to make sense of the world. She writes, "I am able to say This is what I have experienced and This is what I know, and most important, This is who I am.”
Sabba Khan’s stunning contribution to Drawing Power combines architectural drawing with expressive figurative drawing to relate a family story of sexual trauma. Khan, a second-generation Pakistani immigrant who grew up in a large family in London, draws the story of her "faceless sister," rendering her childhood home in three-dimensional form. Inside the structure’s transparent walls, we see a dozen family members gathering, embarking on the family’s Saturday routine, when the extended family would gather at their home. Khan, an architectural designer, shows the family in the middle of their domestic routines: preparing food, eating, playing games, and changing babies. It was in this setting, we learn, that this sister was assaulted by a male relative. Her isolation, rendered in stark contrast to the porous walls of the family home, is depicted by a brick wall that surrounds her after she tells her family about the assault. The wall encloses her, both in this initial episode and again, when she experiences something similar, years later.