Chie Mori

Chie Mori is a Japanese contemporary printmaker working in Hamburg, Germany — one of the small but consistent cohort of Japanese-born printmakers who have established their mature studio practices outside Japan. Born in Ishikawa Prefecture (north-central Japan), she trained at Bremen University of the Arts (Hochschule für Künste Bremen) in Germany rather than at a Japanese art university, a training pathway that places her squarely within the contemporary German printmaking tradition rather than the Tokyo or Kyoto art-school lineages that dominate the CWAJ catalogue. Her birth year is not publicly disclosed in the CWAJ documentation.

Her 2024 carborundum print 'The Survival 4.0' (50 × 50 cm), exhibited at the 68th CWAJ Print Show 2025, exemplifies the visual register of her practice: a square-format large-scale carborundum composition. The carborundum print technique (using silicon carbide grit applied to a plate as the printing matrix) produces strong tactile surface and rich tonal modeling distinct from copperplate intaglio or relief print; the technique has been associated with European-tradition contemporary printmaking since the 1950s and is not common among Japanese-trained printmakers. The 'Survival 4.0' title and the version-number suffix (4.0) suggest an ongoing series engaged with themes of survival, resilience, or biological-and-technological persistence — the version-numbering format borrowed from software-versioning is a contemporary signal.

Mori's training at Bremen University of the Arts places her in the German contemporary printmaking tradition that has been strong in Hamburg, Berlin, and other major German art cities. The German tradition has been historically receptive to carborundum print, mezzotint, and other surface-emphasizing intaglio techniques, and to abstract-and-conceptual subject matter. Her 50 × 50 cm format and the carborundum technique together signal a German-tradition contemporary print aesthetic rather than the Japanese-tradition mokuhanga or copperplate-engraving registers that dominate the CWAJ catalogue.

Her participation in CWAJ — as a Japanese-born artist working in Germany — places her among the international Japanese printmaking diaspora alongside artists like Eva Pietzcker, Kasai Masahiro (Paris-trained, returned to Tokyo), and others whose practices bridge European and Japanese print traditions. The Hamburg base is unusual within this diaspora; the more typical European base for Japanese-born printmakers is Paris (with the Atelier Contrepoint connection) or London (with the Hanga Ten gallery network).

The square 50 × 50 cm format of 'The Survival 4.0' is well-suited to the carborundum technique — square sheets allow the rich tonal grit to fill the visual field without needing the directional emphasis that horizontal or vertical compositions imply. The contemporary-conceptual title 'Survival 4.0' signals an engagement with current concerns about ecological-and-technological resilience that distinguishes her work from the lyrical-landscape register of senior CWAJ printmakers.