Let the paper speak

It may not be as vivacious, burnished and striking as marble, but in adept hands even paper can be carved into masterpieces. If you don’t believe it, look at the sculptures sliced out of mere sheets of coloured paper by Shazia Bhanji.Having learnt the basics of fine arts from the masters, Shazia tells stories with paper — nothing but paper. From capturing the essence of the issue of child abuse in one of her paper-carved stories, she has gone to the extent of exploring the dynamics of the husband-wife relationship conflict with her paper cuts.Shazia, a Pakistani expatriate, recently created a 7-foot-high sculpture depicting the importance of water conservation, all made with paper. Completely self-taught in paper art, she has been praised for her works by the pros in the arena locally and internationally.By just following her passion and teaching herself, she has attained a level where she can easily be counted among the professionals in just two years. Acknowledging for the uniqueness in her work, Shazia has been teaching the paper art at Virginia Commonwealth University-Qatar (VCUQ) summer camp.She is working on multiple paper sculptures and intends to hold her first solo exhibition in Doha next year. As a contemporary artist who creates highly individual and visually appealing paper sculptures, she works with layers of coloured papers, sometimes more than 500-700 at a time, placed on top of each other, carving her way delicately, cutting each sheet, to create an intriguing story.“It all began when I started learning drawing and painting from Pakistan’s leading artists. I had already had passion for meeting new people, finding stories and narrating them to others. I chose this art as medium,” Shazia tells Community in a recent chat at her place, which in itself is exquisitely designed and decorated by the artist.You would see oil paintings, mostly abstracts, hanging on the walls, with dip light thrown on them from all the right angles from the top.Initially, she worked on oil paintings but later moved to combine all mediums for her artworks. Her artworks were displayed by leading galleries in Lahore and Karachi. “I am observant, sensitive and strongly believe that surroundings play an important role in our lives. I enjoy narrating human stories and working with colours. Every colour has its unique place and reason to be there. Every cut is exact and meaningful. I love the great strength, yet the delicacy of paper,” says Shazia.In the quest to do something different and challenging, she started exploring contemporary art forms around the globe. Her art world took a new turn when she saw art pieces made with paper. She hasn’t looked back since.“I did not have the tools to discover the techniques used for paper artworks. So I made my own tools with toothpicks and started with a small project first,” recalls Shazia, adding she then learnt by herself all the techniques of paper art, with help from the Internet and a lot of practice. When she looks at a piece of artwork, she can explain the process that would have gone into its making. Once you can decipher the complexities involved in creating a piece, you can easily employ those same techniques to create your own pieces of art. And the ability to decrypt the techniques is mostly gifted, believes the artist.  Working with colourful sheets, Shazia crafts stories using diverse topics for her artworks such as conflicts, hollow soul, women, water, and harmony — all of which are connected to the expression of human emotions.“I meet people. I listen to their stories. Whatever touches my heart is the idea for my artwork. I then sit down and pin down my idea on a sheet of paper before going about cutting it into an artwork,” says the artist.Taking us through the process of making a piece of paper art, she says she first writes down the story. She finds appropriate words that express her feelings. From the written story, she then starts drawing the work on the paper sheet.After creating multiple drafts, she picks the best one and then starts carving the paper sheets on its design on the stencil. Layers of different colour sheets cut into different shapes and sizes go on one another to form one piece of art.They are so thick sometimes they have to be clipped together. “For me it is making something out of nothing. The general perception about paper is that we can write, draw or paint on the paper. But for me, I wanted to do bigger things with paper,” says Shazia. And it is just paper, different sheets glued together.Shazia, living in Doha with her husband and 14-year-old daughter, says she would look to learn from the masters in the field to further tone her work. She recently showed her work to artists in Australia during her recent visits where “everybody appreciated her work and advised her to take it to the next level.”Depending on the project, she says it takes days to sometimes months to complete one piece of art. One has to carve and bend each and every sheet separately. The tricky part is that you have to form a sketch in your mind and work from there.Shazia says in her ideas she is attracted more to abstract as she can put her creativity to maximum use in it. In one of her projects, she creates awareness about the issue of child abuse, where she shows a child being approached by hands (in black) from all directions. The child’s space portrayed in red colour is shrinking.The artist says the experience of teaching has in turn taught her a lot. “You learn new things from everyone every day. The teaching experience has been particularly enriching for me,” says Shazia. She is currently working on a project that revolves around the Japanese mythology that every human has three faces.It will be a paper sculpture and will be themed on how people put masks on their faces. It will be a large sculpture, but how would it exactly look like? Fingers crossed.