Obscure Beauty: An exploration of the female form

An old picture can hurl us back in time, and remind us of memories long forgotten.

A young artist, Shakil Mazumder, 34, explores the human anatomy, particularly the female form, with 60 prints in his second solo show 'Obscure Beauty', at Gallery Chitrak.

All the art employs very basic colours: some are a sepia tone, some with shades of green, cyan, red and yellow. The use of limited colours gives them a very grave air and emotionality. 

"However, you will see that most female figures are extensively wrapped up in garments. Metaphorically speaking, this overly wrapping up of the female body represents how society always likes to decide that a woman should always be covered in 'appropriate clothes', not showing much, or any, of their physique," he said. 

"I have seen these poses during my childhood. Where I grew up in my village, there was simplistic beauty in the way women came out of a pond after bathing. Nothing about it was sexual. There was no nudity either. I tried to find beauty in the simple, through their motion," he added. 

Truly, how much clothing should you make women wear, Mazumder wonders. Remembering some poses from his childhood, he took photos of models, and made them the subjects of his latest artworks.

"I drew inspiration from classic art, Greek and Roman sculpting. Baroque and Rococo movements have inspired me a lot. Italian artist Caravaggio's techniques also inspired me. The work of light and shadow and realism from Baroque and Rococo movements are often the subjects of my work," he added.

The prints were created using an ages old technique called woodcut. The technique was invented in ninth century China. It is a primitive form of printing – the woodcut as a precursor to Gutenberg's invention of the press machine in 1436 – but its merits in the art world soon surfaced. 

The technique is painstaking and time consuming, not to mention the manual labour that goes into each individual artwork. The woodcut, as the name suggests, is a technique where a sketch has to be drawn on a flat piece of wood or ply board. That sketch is then slowly chiselled away. However, to achieve the right depth, highlights and shadows, the same sketch has to be etched on at least 10 plies of wood, meticulously adding depth to the layers. 

The layers are then pressed on paper, one layer at a time, using a roller machine. The largest exhibit of 'Obscure Beauty' is a 150x90 centimetre or 5x3 feet one, while the smallest is as little as 13x8 centimetre. But attention to detail is present in each artwork.

"The woodcut knives have to be brought from Japan and China," said the artist. "But before carving on wood, the concepts of, say, watercolour or sketching have to be mastered. We have to understand how light and shadows work first. On paper, there is room for correction. With woodcut, there is zero room for error. One wrong curve and we have to start the ply from scratch."

Woodcut captured Shakil's imagination ever since he was a student of the Faculty of Fine Art, University of Dhaka. But there he was encouraged to finish his work using no more than four plies of wood. That, to him, was limiting.

"I use around 10 to 12 plies now. But if I want to add more detail, I could use as many as 20 plies for one art!" he added. How long does it take to complete each? "Around 15 to 20 days," he answered.

 'Obscure Beauty' ends today. The show is open to all from 11 AM to 8 PM. 

TBS picks: A selection of artworks with a description from the artist

Breathe Life into Beauty-3 (2019) | Woodcut on paper

I needed 12 blocks of wood for this 3 x 5 feet frame. To get from the light to dark shades, I needed to impress 12 times. Ever after 12 impressions, it felt like some areas needed more or less light. This work was a turning point for me, in the past I only created small prints, with this I broke out of that barrier into the realm of large scale art. A few museums from around the world have this in their collection.

Experimental composition (2017) | Woodcut on paper

For this one I focused mainly on the cloth. A little bit of the body is only showing here. Bringing out the characteristic of the fabric was difficult through woodcut. The experience from this helped me with many other works. The meaning of this work is simple: when people are going through their worst times, they face an identity crisis. 

Time & Reality (2016) | Woodcut on paper

I created this when I was completing my Master's degree. White lines running across the image breaks its continuity. That was the state of my mind back then. I was not sure how to go about life. The hands represent fear and crises. I was trying to grasp reality.