This thesis is an interrogation of the Urdu calligraphic script using different material explorations of drawing, painting and found objects. Through interaction with this script, I trace the shift in the letter-form’s evolution as a religious edict to cultural signifier and contemporary construct of transnational and decolonial rhetoric. Theoretically scoping Iftikhar Dadi’s scholarship on ‘calligraphic abstraction’, through the lens of Walter Mignolo’s ‘decolonial aesthetics’, Crang and Ashmore’s ‘transnational spaces of things’, I consult Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s ‘decolonizing methodologies’ to embrace Urdu [script] as a pedagogical tool – through visual art installation, and as methodologically employed in the practice of Sufi dhikr. Investigating the influences and confluences of colonialism on my aesthetic tastes as a transnational subject, I reflect on its reverberation on my artistic practice, in my frequent lettering of the Urdu script. Through research and reflection, I inquire how South Asian patterns inform transnational praxes. Linking ‘calligraphic abstraction’ and dhikr, I observe the transnational’s situation – in decolonial aesthetics.

Keywords: Urdu script, calligraphic abstraction, dhikr, decolonial aesthetics, transnational