OofP29.Neha Choksi
‘Repeat Integrity (Oak)’ by Neha Choksi is the third panel from a series of 7 woodcuts, 47” by 35” each panel, unique series, 2016, photo credit: Anil Rane
Of the Integrity series, of which Repeat Integrity (Oak) is one, she says,‘For each work I took a sheet of veneer and exploited its grain to create woodcuts of some simplicity. Typically in a woodcut you gouge into the surface of the wood, removing the parts you don’t want to print, ink the surface left in relief and make a woodcut. Instead, I cut a circle into the entire piece of veneer, with the blade mark leaving its kerf missing, rotated the circle in the same plane, and then followed the traditional method of hand-inking and hand-printing with a barren. The woodcut lines that create the circle also detach the circle from the surrounding material. The pattern of the grain is disrupted, the connection broken, the communication ever so slightly connected. In Repeat Integrity, I inked the woodcut normally for the first print but did not wipe my matrix clean as one would in order to print again. I then re-inked over it with exponentially evermore ink with each printing, thus obscuring the matrix overtime. The effacement is a revelation of its own.’