Biography
Aiu Kitayama Yamazaki (北山山崎アイウ) is a Japanese-born printmaker, theorist and academic researcher whose contemporary mokuhanga practice has developed inside the institutional framework of the University of the Arts London rather than inside the Japanese university system, and whose published work crosses between art-historical research on the early sōsaku-hanga movement and the studio production of large-format multi-block prints. Before entering the printmaking world she trained in the sciences in Japan, completing a Bachelor of Arts and then a PhD on a scientific subject — an unusual pre-history for a printmaker that is reflected in the systematic, serial structure of her later projects. She subsequently undertook the Master of Arts in Fine Art Printmaking at Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London, where she was awarded the Printmaking Today journal's State of the Art Prize in 2020, the principal recognition for emerging printmakers given through the journal. Her exhibition record from the London years includes the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, the Royal Scottish Academy Annual Exhibition, and the Woolwich Contemporary Print Show. Her print Stairs of the Auditorium — a 45 by 30 centimetre woodblock print — was selected for the 2024 International Mokuhanga Conference juried exhibition in Echizen. Her ongoing series Auditorium gives that work its conceptual frame: it stages a sustained meditation on reflected light from a stage, drawn from her reading of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of perception, and combines water-based and oil-based woodblock impressions for the motifs with stencil printing on the block for the backgrounds, all on mitsumata paper sourced from Echizen. Her parallel research practice has focused on the aesthetic exchange between Japan and the West from the late nineteenth century onward, particularly the Bauhaus and the St Ives artists in their relation to Japanese modernism; her published essays include In Praise of Shadows by Jun'ichiro Tanizaki: A Reflection on Two Contemporary Artists, Hiroshi Sugimoto and Rebecca Salter, with Relation to Aiu Kitayama Yamazaki's Contemporary Print Practice in the IMPACT Printmaking Journal (Issue Four, Autumn 2021) and Influence of 'The Studio' on Kanae Yamamoto: Founder of Sōsaku Hanga Movement — Creative Printmaking. The two strands are tightly linked: her studio production foregrounds the perceptual structure that her writing places at the centre of early sōsaku-hanga's encounter with European modernism. She maintains an artist website under the handle aiukitayama and a separate research profile through the University of the Arts London. Public-collection holdings have not yet been comprehensively published in English, and a definitive birth year and biographical chronology outside of the Camberwell period have not been recovered in the sources available here; she is best characterized at present as a senior emerging printmaker-researcher whose practice has been consolidated through the London printmaking system and validated through the IMC selection in 2024.
Key Facts
- Nationality
- 🇯🇵Japan
- Movement
- Contemporary Mokuhanga
- Works Indexed
- 1
Frequently Asked Questions
Aiu Kitayama Yamazaki (北山山崎アイウ) is a Japanese-born printmaker, theorist and academic researcher whose contemporary mokuhanga practice has developed inside the institutional framework of the University of the Arts London rather than inside the Japanese university system, and whose published work crosses between art-historical research on the early sōsaku-hanga movement and the studio production of large-format multi-block prints. Before entering the printmaking world she trained in the sciences in Japan, completing a Bachelor of Arts and then a PhD on a scientific subject — an unusual pre-history for a printmaker that is reflected in the systematic, serial structure of her later projects. She subsequently undertook the Master of Arts in Fine Art Printmaking at Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London, where she was awarded the Printmaking Today journal's State of the Art Prize in 2020, the principal recognition for emerging printmakers given through the journal. Her exhibition record from the London years includes the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, the Royal Scottish Academy Annual Exhibition, and the Woolwich Contemporary Print Show. Her print Stairs of the Auditorium — a 45 by 30 centimetre woodblock print — was selected for the 2024 International Mokuhanga Conference juried exhibition in Echizen. Her ongoing series Auditorium gives that work its conceptual frame: it stages a sustained meditation on reflected light from a stage, drawn from her reading of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of perception, and combines water-based and oil-based woodblock impressions for the motifs with stencil printing on the block for the backgrounds, all on mitsumata paper sourced from Echizen. Her parallel research practice has focused on the aesthetic exchange between Japan and the West from the late nineteenth century onward, particularly the Bauhaus and the St Ives artists in their relation to Japanese modernism; her published essays include In Praise of Shadows by Jun'ichiro Tanizaki: A Reflection on Two Contemporary Artists, Hiroshi Sugimoto and Rebecca Salter, with Relation to Aiu Kitayama Yamazaki's Contemporary Print Practice in the IMPACT Printmaking Journal (Issue Four, Autumn 2021) and Influence of 'The Studio' on Kanae Yamamoto: Founder of Sōsaku Hanga Movement — Creative Printmaking. The two strands are tightly linked: her studio production foregrounds the perceptual structure that her writing places at the centre of early sōsaku-hanga's encounter with European modernism. She maintains an artist website under the handle aiukitayama and a separate research profile through the University of the Arts London. Public-collection holdings have not yet been comprehensively published in English, and a definitive birth year and biographical chronology outside of the Camberwell period have not been recovered in the sources available here; she is best characterized at present as a senior emerging printmaker-researcher whose practice has been consolidated through the London printmaking system and validated through the IMC selection in 2024.
Kitayama Yamazaki Aiu'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.
Kitayama Yamazaki Aiu 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.