Biography
Ana Govc is a Slovenian artist who participated in the MI-LAB (Mokuhanga Innovation Laboratory) Basic Training Program B in Echizen, Japan in 2024. Through this intensive residency program, she studied mokuhanga, the traditional Japanese water-based woodblock printing technique, under the guidance of Japanese instructors using traditional tools and materials.
The MI-LAB program, which relocated from its longstanding base at Lake Kawaguchiko to a new studio near Echizen Washi no Sato in 2024, provides international artists with comprehensive instruction in the fundamentals of mokuhanga practice. Echizen, one of Japan's most celebrated traditional production areas for Japanese paper, offered Govc and her fellow residents direct access to the washi-making traditions that are integral to mokuhanga printing.
Govc's residency took place in the same year that Echizen hosted the Fifth International Mokuhanga Conference, themed 'Inheritance and Innovation: Mokuhanga Artists Explore Japanese Paper,' which brought together practitioners from around the world to examine the relationship between mokuhanga and washi.
As a representative of Slovenia's emerging mokuhanga community, Govc's training at MI-LAB contributes to the growing network of European artists who are carrying Japanese woodblock printing techniques back to their home countries and integrating them into local printmaking traditions.
Key Facts
- Nationality
- 🇸🇮Slovenia
- Movement
- Contemporary Mokuhanga
Frequently Asked Questions
Ana Govc is a Slovenian artist who participated in the MI-LAB (Mokuhanga Innovation Laboratory) Basic Training Program B in Echizen, Japan in 2024. Through this intensive residency program, she studied mokuhanga, the traditional Japanese water-based woodblock printing technique, under the guidance of Japanese instructors using traditional tools and materials.
Ana Govc'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.