Yukie Kishi

Yukie Kishi (岸雪絵) is a Japanese printmaker and educator who is currently Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Arts Studies, Kyoto University of the Arts (KUA, formerly Kyoto Saga University of Arts). Her practice is centred on lithography and drawing, and she is one of the active mid-career figures in the Kyoto print scene who emerged from the Kyoto Seika and Kyoto Geidai pedagogical lineage.

Kishi completed a BA at Kyoto Seika University and an MA at Kyoto City University of Arts (Kyoto Geidai) Graduate School in 2005, majoring in painting and printmaking. She has subsequently joined the Kyoto University of the Arts faculty in the Graduate School Arts Studies department, where she teaches printmaking and produces her own studio output. The Kyoto Seika–Kyoto Geidai dual training places her within the Kyoto-based 1990s/2000s generation of academic printmakers whose senior reference points are Akira Kurosaki and the post-war Kyoto print establishment.

Her studio practice articulates a distinctive conceptual register: she explores 'assumptions and illusions' encountered when observing objects, and 'reality amidst uncertainty,' creating prints and drawings based on photographic imagery of familiar subjects (glass cups, household objects, domestic still-life subjects). Her recent print 'Glass Cup — stacking —' (2023, lithograph with double-sided printing, 29 × 29 cm, included in the CWAJ Print Show 2025) typifies her current vocabulary: small-format lithographic plates depicting transparent and reflective objects in still-life arrangements.

Her award history extends across two decades. She received the Kyoto Exhibition awards at the Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art in 2005 and 2007, the Aomori International Print Triennale Band Name Stone Award in 2007, the Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art Award in 2009, the Miida Seiichiro Award at the inaugural 1st TKO International Mini Print Exhibition in 2016, and an Honorable Mention at the 9th Adachi Ukiyo-e Grand Prize in 2018. She has exhibited at the Tokyo Wonder Wall (Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, 2011), the Edition of Time / Age of Prints exhibition at Joshibi Art University Art Museum (2012), the Kyoto Prefecture Art and Crafts New Selection Exhibition (2019), and the FACE 2019 exhibition at SOMPO Museum (2019).

Her prints are held in public collections including the National Diet Library (Washington D.C. branch and Tokyo), the Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art, the Machida City Museum of Graphic Arts, and the Bank of Kyoto. She is a member of the Japan Society of Printmaking (Nihon Hanga Kyokai) and is represented in the United States and internationally through the College Women's Association of Japan (CWAJ) annual print show.

Within the contemporary Japanese print scene Kishi is a representative case of the Kyoto-academic mid-career generation: a faculty printmaker whose lithographic still-life practice combines disciplined photographic-derived figuration with conceptual interest in perception and the relationship between observed object and printed surface. Her continuous award history at both Japanese national-level prize exhibitions (Aomori, Adachi, Kyoto) and at international festivals places her in the cohort of Japanese printmakers whose work circulates at multiple scales — domestic museum, international biennial, and academic-pedagogical — simultaneously.