Biography
Mateja Smic is a Dublin-based contemporary printmaker whose practice centres on mokuhanga (Japanese water-based woodblock printing) alongside other print and mixed-media processes, including digital collage, video, and animation. She graduated from the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) in Dublin in 2019 with a degree in Fine Print and Critical Cultures, and is a member of Graphic Studio Dublin.
Her work combines philosophical and psychological questions of experience with material experimentation, addressing the phenomenon of othering and the tensions between a real subject and its mediated representations. Her choice of materials tends to proceed by association with the subject matter rather than from a fixed technical repertoire, producing an intuitive, experimental approach to image-making across print and time-based media.
Smic participated in Kanreki, Graphic Studio Dublin's exhibition marking the studio's sixtieth anniversary, for which every contributing artist worked in mokuhanga and incorporated the colour red. The show placed her among Graphic Studio Dublin members and invited guest artists including Yoko Akino, Katsutoshi Yuasa, and Paul Furneaux. It was presented at the Graphic Studio Gallery in Dublin in 2021, also travelled to The Model in Sligo, and featured in the satellite programme of the 2021 International Mokuhanga Conference. Her mokuhanga output includes prints such as 'Tabula Rasa.'
Her wider exhibition record includes the solo show 'Aesthetics of a Split Subject' at Engage Art Studios in Galway (2019) and group exhibitions such as 'ECHOES' at the Graphic Studio Gallery in Dublin (2019) and 'Human Signature' at the Hyde Bridge Gallery in Sligo (2020). In 2019 she also took part in the international curatorial residency 'What Could / Should Curating Do?' in Belgrade, supported by i-Portunus.
Among recent NCAD-trained printmakers working at Graphic Studio Dublin, Smic represents an emerging generation building a mokuhanga practice while situating it within broader research in contemporary print and image-making. Public biographical detail beyond her NCAD graduation, Graphic Studio Dublin membership, and mokuhanga exhibition record remains limited.
Key Facts
- Nationality
- 🇮🇪Ireland
- Movement
- Contemporary Mokuhanga
- Works Indexed
- 1
Frequently Asked Questions
Mateja Smic is a Dublin-based contemporary printmaker whose practice centres on mokuhanga (Japanese water-based woodblock printing) alongside other print and mixed-media processes, including digital collage, video, and animation. She graduated from the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) in Dublin in 2019 with a degree in Fine Print and Critical Cultures, and is a member of Graphic Studio Dublin.
Mateja Šmic'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.