Biography
Kimmy Tseng (曾苡晴) is a Taipei, Taiwan–based illustrator and mokuhanga printmaker who works under the studio name Zhu Jun Printmaking Studio (竹君版畫工作室). Her work has appeared in the principal international juried exhibition for contemporary Japanese water-based woodblock printmaking — the International Mokuhanga Conference — through the 2024 IMC at Echizen, Fukui Prefecture, where her print Migrant Bird (候鳥, water-based woodblock print, 30.0 × 65.0 cm) was selected for the all-prints exhibition gallery under the Taiwan national listing. The print takes its title and thematic source from a poem by the Indian poet Famida Y. Bash, treating the migration of birds as a frame for thinking about departure and return, and its long horizontal format and bird-and-flight subject place it inside the established mokuhanga conventions of seasonal observation and migratory reading carried over from older East Asian print and painting traditions, though the work itself is made in the contemporary self-cut, self-printed mode rather than through any shin-hanga publisher. The format is unusual in two senses — at 65 cm in width it sits at the larger end of comfortably hand-baren-printable scale, and the horizontal orientation reads as a scroll rather than as the more characteristic vertical or square modern mokuhanga sheet — and the choice is consistent with the studio's interest in carrying the visual rhythm of a poem across a long horizontal field. Tseng identifies on her studio site as an artist working between illustration and printmaking, and the body of work organized through Zhu Jun Printmaking Studio includes both mokuhanga editions and illustration projects that draw on the same observational practice; the studio name combines bamboo (竹) and a personal-name character to give it a literary register that runs through the prints themselves. Her IMC2024 selection places her within the small but growing Taiwanese cohort of contemporary mokuhanga makers — the Taiwan delegation at Echizen included several printmakers working in the water-based woodblock revival, an emerging cluster within East Asian mokuhanga that is distinct in its training and gallery infrastructure from the longer-established Japanese, American, and European groups, and that has begun to develop a recognizable post-2010 generation of practitioners working between traditional East Asian visual language and contemporary printmaking pedagogy. Biographical particulars are limited in the public record by choice rather than by oversight: a birth year, formal art-school training, prior exhibition history, and gallery representation have not been published in the standard print-research aggregators, and the available sources are her own studio website at kimmytseng2014.wixsite.com/website, her Instagram (kimmy.tseng_), and the IMC2024 exhibition catalogue. The conservative summary is that she is a working Taipei-based contemporary mokuhanga and illustration practitioner whose international visibility was established through the 2024 IMC Echizen exhibition, that Migrant Bird is the published reference point for her current work, and that further biographical material — training, exhibition record, dealer relationships — is at this stage pending publication outside her own studio channels and the IMC's exhibition documentation.
Key Facts
- Nationality
- 🇹🇼Taiwan
- Movement
- Contemporary Mokuhanga
- Works Indexed
- 1
Frequently Asked Questions
Kimmy Tseng (曾苡晴) is a Taipei, Taiwan–based illustrator and mokuhanga printmaker who works under the studio name Zhu Jun Printmaking Studio (竹君版畫工作室). Her work has appeared in the principal international juried exhibition for contemporary Japanese water-based woodblock printmaking — the International Mokuhanga Conference — through the 2024 IMC at Echizen, Fukui Prefecture, where her print Migrant Bird (候鳥, water-based woodblock print, 30.0 × 65.0 cm) was selected for the all-prints exhibition gallery under the Taiwan national listing. The print takes its title and thematic source from a poem by the Indian poet Famida Y. Bash, treating the migration of birds as a frame for thinking about departure and return, and its long horizontal format and bird-and-flight subject place it inside the established mokuhanga conventions of seasonal observation and migratory reading carried over from older East Asian print and painting traditions, though the work itself is made in the contemporary self-cut, self-printed mode rather than through any shin-hanga publisher. The format is unusual in two senses — at 65 cm in width it sits at the larger end of comfortably hand-baren-printable scale, and the horizontal orientation reads as a scroll rather than as the more characteristic vertical or square modern mokuhanga sheet — and the choice is consistent with the studio's interest in carrying the visual rhythm of a poem across a long horizontal field. Tseng identifies on her studio site as an artist working between illustration and printmaking, and the body of work organized through Zhu Jun Printmaking Studio includes both mokuhanga editions and illustration projects that draw on the same observational practice; the studio name combines bamboo (竹) and a personal-name character to give it a literary register that runs through the prints themselves. Her IMC2024 selection places her within the small but growing Taiwanese cohort of contemporary mokuhanga makers — the Taiwan delegation at Echizen included several printmakers working in the water-based woodblock revival, an emerging cluster within East Asian mokuhanga that is distinct in its training and gallery infrastructure from the longer-established Japanese, American, and European groups, and that has begun to develop a recognizable post-2010 generation of practitioners working between traditional East Asian visual language and contemporary printmaking pedagogy. Biographical particulars are limited in the public record by choice rather than by oversight: a birth year, formal art-school training, prior exhibition history, and gallery representation have not been published in the standard print-research aggregators, and the available sources are her own studio website at kimmytseng2014.wixsite.com/website, her Instagram (kimmy.tseng_), and the IMC2024 exhibition catalogue. The conservative summary is that she is a working Taipei-based contemporary mokuhanga and illustration practitioner whose international visibility was established through the 2024 IMC Echizen exhibition, that Migrant Bird is the published reference point for her current work, and that further biographical material — training, exhibition record, dealer relationships — is at this stage pending publication outside her own studio channels and the IMC's exhibition documentation.
Kimmy Tseng'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.
Kimmy Tseng is a contemporary printmaker working in the mokuhanga (Japanese woodblock) tradition. Their work contributes to the living tradition of Japanese woodblock printing. Prices for contemporary mokuhanga prints range from $100 for smaller works to $1,500 for major compositions. Most prints sell in the $180–$600 range. The global mokuhanga community has been growing, with increasing exhibition opportunities and collector interest. Contemporary mokuhanga represents an affordable entry point for collectors.