Chiaki Ogawa

Chiaki Ogawa (born 1971, Gunma Prefecture) is a Japanese intaglio printmaker whose multi-color, single-plate viscosity-printing practice has produced a sustained body of small-to-medium format etchings from the early 2000s onward. Working from a Tokyo studio base after training in both Japan and France, she translates memories, sounds, and small everyday observations into layered chromatic compositions whose surfaces pull together passages of color in the way that, in her words, threads of different fiber are woven into a tapestry.

Ogawa graduated from Takasaki Art Junior College in Gunma in 1992, where she studied graphic design. After several years of independent printmaking practice she joined the Zabo House Print Studio in Tokyo as a regular working artist between 1994 and 1996. From 2002 to 2003 she undertook a residency at Atelier Contrepoint in Paris, the storied print workshop founded by Stanley William Hayter — a key conduit for the technique of viscosity printing, in which inks of different viscosities are applied to a single etched plate so that multiple colors print from one matrix in a single press pass. She studied during this period under Hector Saunier and Sonoko Horiuchi, the studio's longtime instructors.

Returning to Tokyo, Ogawa joined Ega Etching Studio (江賀銅版画工房) as a working artist in 2004 and has continued there to the present. From 2020 she has also been a member of the IKEBUKURO Print Studio. The combination of these two Tokyo studios — Ega for the etching plate work and IKEBUKURO for the studio community — represents the typical working pattern for a contemporary Tokyo-area intaglio artist.

Her technique is distinctive within the contemporary Japanese intaglio field. Most Japanese intaglio printmakers of her generation work with multiple plates printed sequentially on a single sheet — a process that registers each plate to the next and allows for sharp color separation but produces relatively flat color. Ogawa's commitment to viscosity printing keeps the entire color event on one plate: ink layers of different viscosities (typically thin oily inks under stiff opaque ones, applied in the deeper bitten and shallower planographic areas of the same plate) interpenetrate as they print, producing the soft chromatic gradients and unexpected color combinations that distinguish her sheets.

The result is a body of work that reads as quiet, dense, and lyrical. Her artist statement describes her interest in 'something invisible but that surely exists' — memories, sounds, sensory residues — and the prints are typically titled in Japanese with words for transitional moments: 'Hitoyasumi' (a small pause, 2003), 'Noboru' (rising, 2005), 'Detour — Mawari-michi' (2007), 'Sono mukou' (the far side, 2013), 'Yoru to yoru o tsunagu' (connecting night and night, 2013), 'Meguru tsuki' (a circling moon, 2013).

Ogawa has exhibited in the major international miniature print biennials, with selections at Connecticut (2023), New York (2019, 2022), Spain (finalist 2014), Bulgaria (2008), and Romania (2005). She is a regular participant in the Japan Art Print Association and Gunma Print exhibitions in Japan, and her work is held by the Tama Art University Museum in Tokyo. Her 2024 etching 'Somewhere' (39 × 38 cm) was selected for the 68th CWAJ Print Show in 2025. She maintains her own portfolio website at chiakiogawa-printworks.com and an Instagram presence under @55ogachi.