Biography
Alex Mankiewicz is an illustrator and printmaker based in Kyoto and Byron Bay, Australia, whose graphic approach to image-making is rooted in their formative years as a printmaker in Kyoto. Having lived and worked in France, the United Kingdom, and the United States before settling between Japan and Australia, Mankiewicz brings a distinctly international perspective to a practice that encompasses illustration, graphic narrative, editorial work, and mokuhanga woodblock printing.
Mankiewicz began their career as a printmaker, and the graphic sensibility of printmaking continues to inform all of their visual work, from published illustrations to gallery prints. Their printed images are characterized by bold compositional choices and a narrative clarity that reflects both their printmaking training and their parallel work as a graphic novelist and book illustrator.
Their published works include 'When the World was Soft: Yindjibarndi Creation Stories,' published by Allen and Unwin in 2024, which retells Indigenous Australian creation narratives through their distinctive visual language. They collaborated with the Kurdish-Iranian writer Behrouz Boochani on 'Until We Are All Free' (2018), and have created several picture books including the 'Wee Charles' series (2015–2019) and 'Home Free' (2017). They have contributed to Kyoto Journal since 2015 and have published work in the Griffith Review.
Mankiewicz's work has been recognized by American Illustration and the Australian and New Zealand Illustration Awards, and they were shortlisted for the Comic Arts Awards of Australia in both 2019 and 2021. Their current projects include 'SINgularity,' a series of speculative fiction graphic novellas, and 'Dog Days,' an exploration of animal idioms.
In 2024, Mankiewicz participated in the International Mokuhanga Conference in Echizen, Japan. Their engagement with the conference reflects an ongoing commitment to the mokuhanga tradition from their base in Kyoto, one of the historic centers of Japanese woodblock printing.
Key Facts
- Nationality
- 🇯🇵Japan
- Movement
- Contemporary Mokuhanga
- Works Indexed
- 17
Frequently Asked Questions
Alex Mankiewicz is an illustrator and printmaker based in Kyoto and Byron Bay, Australia, whose graphic approach to image-making is rooted in their formative years as a printmaker in Kyoto. Having lived and worked in France, the United Kingdom, and the United States before settling between Japan and Australia, Mankiewicz brings a distinctly international perspective to a practice that encompasses illustration, graphic narrative, editorial work, and mokuhanga woodblock printing.
Alex Mankiewicz's work was shaped by the Contemporary Mokuhanga tradition in Japanese woodblock printmaking. Contemporary Mokuhanga: Contemporary mokuhanga (literally "wood-block print") encompasses artists working from approximately 1970 to the present who continue or reinvent traditional Japanese woodblock printing techniques.
