Somewhere In Northeast India, there is a valley. A deep, lopsided and gently undulating ‘V’ covered with dense foliage. Multiple, parallel lines mark the ether above and behind it, as if to denote the parameters of a rising horizon. In this Woodcut print (image 2, 15 x 20 inches, 2020), the artist has chiseled out the surface of the woodblock with minimal lines. Viewed from a distance, the resultant black and white presentation looks like a perfect photographic replica.
It was the first art show I was seeing in almost a year. The distress of lockdown and the Covid-19 pandemic aside, being a caregiver is exhausting and emotionally draining. I had been in Delhi for more than three months and hadn’t been able to get out. As my mother got better, I tuned into some on-line viewing but despite the amazing ‘viewing room’ experience, I was itching to see a live exhibition. Not just zoom into the artworks with a digital cursor but get up close - using my body and mind to look, as also imbibe the subtle nuances that one receives from the physicality of art, which a digital experience doesn’t and cannot convey. And, Chandan Bez Baruah’s exhibition of woodcut prints, curated by Waswo x Waswo, at Latitude 28 ( January 22nd to March 1st, 2021, but may be extended), was just the thing for me.
Walking into the first floor of the Lado Sarai gallery run by Bhavna Kakkar, I held my breath in awe. Were these really woodblock prints, couldn’t be! The craftsmanship was so magnificent, that I began to wonder if somehow the artist had used laser technology to cut the wodges. But this was more of an after-thought. Surrounded by Bez Baruah’s graphically portrayed black and white photorealist landscapes, one was transported into another world. Not only was the execution mind-blowing, the finely chiselled markings denoting the thriving countryside of the North Eastern region of India was another kind of space. I was imaginatively transported, away from the cacophony of the city and the life-threatening episodes that my mother’s illness had put me and my sisters through. Chandan’s images of dense foliage, were contrarily life-affirming and therefore refreshing. And yet, the blackness of ink instead of lush green was intimidating. I was rejuvenated but only momentarily, as the stark evocation didn’t sustain this restorative effect.
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In addition, the title of the show ‘If A Tree Falls (Somewhere in Northeast India)’ was most curious, compelling me go beyond the profusion of mountainous growth to consider what the artist sought to imply. Was he alluding to the danger of the earth’s ecology? Threatened by heedless urban projects spreading like an uncontainable tumour, farther and farther into virgin forest. But, it didn’t seem quite so straightforward. Though I could see an abundance of trees or a likeness thereof, the black and white images were contrarily bleak. Where large areas of black within each frame, created a feeling of gloom. This could suggest the fragility of the jungle - of flora and fauna endangered by deforestation. But, the artist’s medium of woodcut was a contradiction. I therefore assumed it wasn’t just a lament of the forest, of when yet another tree would fall, and another and yet another. Something deeper was at play, or was it?
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As my viewing wasn’t a solitary one, I left the reflections for another time and enjoyed the company of old friends, while admiring the dexterity of Bez Baruah’s block prints.
Historically, block printing on textiles preceded the printing of books using wood blocks and also the famed Japanese Ukiyo-e woodcut prints. Being a textile designer, I’ve been fascinated by this technique since my student days when one learned to print fabric using blocks carved from wood. Engraving a block of wood was not only too specialised a task for novice students but expert ‘block-cutters’, who create the ‘stamps’ from designs drawn on paper, have always been the backbone of block-printing communities. Wandering through villages that specialise in these textiles, one can hear the inimitable sounds of lumber wodges being chiselled and hammered, emanating from small kiosks and shops of carvers, lining village lanes close to printing units, to provide ‘chippas’ with blocks ready to print. At the Anoki Museum of Block Printing, just outside Jaipur, I once sat for hours watching fifty year old craftsman Mujeeb Ulla Khan, whose been craving blocks since the age of ten, listening to his stories – of how he learned by watching others, to master the indigenous tools of kalam (chisel), thapi (hammer) and kamani (bow)which he used to intricately carve the surface of the ‘stamp’.
However, artists such as Chandan Bez Baruah, are both carver and printer, making the contemporary art of woodcut prints all the more engaging. One is not just viewing his artistic commentary but also witness to enormous hand-crafting skills, most commendable in an era of technologies that challenge the painstaking work done by hand. With so many printmaking techniques available, it is noteworthy that Bez Baruah chooses this most ancient craft. And that he has perfected his deftness, is even more creditable.
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While many artists across the centuries have worked with woodcut, most didn’t carve the blocks themselves. One of the most iconic, world renowned prints, is ‘The Great Wave’ by Hokusai. This legendary Japanese printmaker and painter, of the Edo period, is said to have been capable of carving his own blocks but probably didn’t, being creative with illustrations and paintings instead. Albrecht Durer, an earlier artist of the fifteenth century German Renaissance, transformed the crude and thick lines of earlier printing with intricacy of detail and subtle gradations. Achieving this through precise carving, he elevated the artform to a level, historically unsurpassed. A notation in his theoretical writings suggests that he carved some blocks himself, deviating from the general practice of assigning this work to a professional woodcutter, but even so it was just an occasional thing.
Contemplating why Bez Baruah defies convention in this regard I made a study of his prints, textual material on his art practice and life in the hillsides of the North east region. He was born in the city of Nagoan, Assam, through which flows the Kolong River - a tributary of the mighty Brahmaputra. His mother’s early demise compelled the family to relocate to Guwahati and it was here that he developed a life-long connection with the woods. Residing in Nagaon, his proximity to indigenous Assamese communities such as the Karbi and Tiwa (Lalung) and their native traditions of living in harmony with the natural habitat, as also the exposure to their spiritual and cultural traditions may have influenced his early association with nature, but the artist says : “When we shifted to Guwahati city, I became lonely…….Guwahati city is surrounded with hills, and my home also was near the lower end of the hills. I used to go to the green jungle (for) more than entertainment or other activities. In the midst of the jungles, I talked with them. I enjoyed my talks with the jungles more than my friends”.
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This intimacy of Bez Baruah’s relationship with the wilderness is reflected in the woodcut images he crafts. As Waswo, points out, it is as “if the artist has trekked us through the jungle to his most favoured haunts, asking us to stay silent and observe what he treasures and wishes to reveal……Chandan has heard the songs of birds, the peep of frogs, the swift clicking buzz of beetles and the rustle through the leaves. He has heard trees falling in the forest.”
And yet, I sense that the affability he formed with the woodlands, besides being his sanctuary from the buzzing city of Guwahati, was also a means for him to communicate with the forces of nature and through this, he formed an unconventional bond with an absent mother. The countryside in her verdure fullness, became the parent. The metaphor of trees falling, becomes as much about deforestation as about loss that human beings encounter, where the demise of a mother is an irreplaceable one. What does a child in the fourth standard do to quell his grief and get on with the business of living? How does he relate to other children at his tender age of nine, who are undoubtedly oblivious of the despair he holds in every crevice of his being: he talks to the trees that stand tall in the untrammelled hills that surround him. And when they start falling, it is as if he is losing his nurturer over and over again.
The physicality of carving the felled timber becomes a means to retain this connect with the tree, as also a means to honour and mourn the loss of his sanctuary, his parent. The prints are not mere images of the wilderness that he once lived amidst - a reminder of what we could lose in our carelessness, they are the precious memories of a child that grew up without his mother, who forged a bond with this vegetal environment instead. Gouging out the wood, chiselling indents into its surface, permit him explore recollections as also express his anguish over the fragility of life; something he is all too familiar with. In the process of carving, he both caresses the wood and destroys it. The tree is no longer a living thing, but its memory lives on through the woodcut print – the proverbial paradox of life!
Initially Chandan used wood blocks to carve with, but when he moved to the National Capital Region, he found it easier to source MDF or medium-density fibre-board. Although I have not seen his earlier work and whether or not he was able to achieve the same fineness of lines and details, the smooth surface of this reconstituted board, made by fusing fine wood fibre and glue, can be manipulated much easier than actual woodblocks. And the artist has used this to maximum effect with his photorealist prints.
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While the natural habitat dominates most prints, there are some deviations too. In the middle of extensive shrubbery, one can spy the roof of a cottage. In P-II Woodcut print (14 x 20 inches, 2020), the fibre has been scooped out to imply both the crudeness of the construction as to also retain the hallmark of the traditional woodcut print. Here, the tools that hollowed out the wood leave a distinctive stamp – of history, of naivety and lacking the finessed technique the artist has otherwise cultivated. In the midst of ultrafine carving, this act seems a deliberate harking back to the past and of imaginatively preserving a jungle refuge. A home away from home, perhaps more comforting than the four walls that defined one for the artist. Surrounded by a thick undergrowth, there is no way into this abode nor out. All one sees of what lies within, is a stamp of darkness. Black ink that is retained on the surface of the board – the area that is left intact and not carved or torn away from the resource. The hedgerow expands and lengthens to create an incomplete bower over the cottage and the space in between is hollowed out with a Dremel tool, to create tiny dots. Instead of stars twinkling, I like to think of them as fireflies in the sky.
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Bez Barhua is not content with intricately carving and printing single-block prints that are approximately two square feet in dimension, he ventures to create larger landscapes with four such blocks and the precision with which he does so, is riveting. The eye goes over and over these quadriptych prints. The precision of the print and meticulously engraved detail denotes a superhuman effort. I work in hand-crafting textiles and can get utterly frustrated with the laboured pace or if I fail in trying to achieve the desired modicum of perfection. In this digital age, where machines do anything as good or better than the hand, and most hand-crafting skills and produce serve as mere nostalgia or novelty, it would require incredible discipline to persist with such painstaking endeavour and level of proficiency. Bez Baruah’s tools range from traditional Swiss and Japanese tools and those which he has developed himself. And, even though MDF is markedly easier to carve than the wood blocks he earlier sourced from Assam, I just cannot get my head around his determination to achieve this kind of realistic representation. Especially with digital cameras and photographic prints rendering such effort superfluous. But, the artist deliberately creates this photorealistic likeness, working with photographs that he himself has taken (possibly in recent times).
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Yet, if one zooms into the images, putting your eye to the glass that contains them, the impression of marks are minimized, rendering them more abstract than real. Dense foliage is not a collection of perfectly carved leaves as the camera can reproduce, but myriad amoebic squiggles floating over the mountainside. However, stepping back, the impression of every single foliole engraved in perfect detail, is recreated, by the same marks that do not remotely resemble a leaf as recognized by the human eye. Chandan Bez Baruah prefers illusion to exactitude.
In other prints, peering close, multiple cross-hatched lines appear to be placed ad hoc, which along with the amoebic marks on the hills become cognizant of the output of a contemporary state of mind. But, look again and you realise that each line, each mark, isn’t random or carved with indignation, impatience or angst, reflective of the average modern temperament. It is a kind of meditation. Where each line or mark is evocative of the character of the jungle as he knew it, as Chandan remembers. Looking back on these scenes with a sense of inaccessibility, emulating the photographic capture of light from the surface and texture of foliage as seen from a distance. More illusory and intangible than figurative, is a conscientious attempt at reiterating and recalling the magical comfort provided by the jungle. Where every stem that crossed over the other, did so because that was the only way it could develop. Able to chart its relatively unhindered path because no-one came along to way to prune it, to make it bend to this convention or other. Every leaf, or evocation thereof, that Bez Baruah carved is a deliberation. Every dot is essential to the randomness of the wild, unimpeded growth that nurtured his soul. Snuggling into the ‘anchal’ of an absent parent, exemplified as the omniscient spirit in the forest’s ample lap of nature.
