Shokoufeh Fallah

Shokoufeh Fallah is rendered here in mokuhanga, the Japanese water-based woodblock technique that Andrea G. Artz has adopted for her portrait series. The print would have been carved across multiple cherry-wood blocks, each carrying one tonal or chromatic component of the face, then printed on [washi](/glossary/washi) using a [baren](/glossary/baren) and water-soluble pigments. Artz's portraits favor a frontal or near-frontal head, with the figure isolated against a quiet ground so that the slight irregularities of hand-printing — fine variation in registration, soft [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) at the edges of shadow — become part of how the likeness is read. The technique converts the photographic source into a graphic surface in which each color pass is a separate decision about resemblance. Within Artz's wider practice, which moves from photography into installation, sculpture, and print, this portrait operates as both a finished work and an intermediate stage: the same source images that produce her flat mokuhanga sheets are also folded into the three-dimensional paper portraits she shows in site-specific installations.