Bina Shah

Bina Shah is rendered in this woodblock print as part of Andrea G. Artz's continuing investigation of the human figure through mokuhanga. Artz, whose practice spans photography, installation, sculpture, and collage, uses the Japanese water-based woodblock medium to convert photographic source material into a layered, hand-printed surface. Each tonal or chromatic element of the portrait corresponds to a separately carved cherry-wood block, registered against kentō marks and printed in sequence onto absorbent [washi](/glossary/washi). The technical demands of this process—the matching of registration, the controlled application of pigment with a [baren](/glossary/baren), the management of paper moisture—shape how the sitter's likeness is reconstructed from photographic data. For Artz, who completed her MFA at the University of Leeds, the portrait is not only an image of a person but a material study of the figure's presence in two-dimensional space. The print sits within a larger body of work that has more recently developed three-dimensional, folded photographic constructions, extending her engagement with portraiture beyond the flat plane.