Biography
Aeri Park (born 1992, Tokyo) is a Korean-Japanese printmaker whose copper-plate intaglio practice traces her family history as a third-generation Zainichi Korean — Korean residents of Japan who came to the country during the colonial period or whose families remained after 1945. Born in Tokyo and raised in Gyeonggi Province in South Korea, she returned to Japan for art school and graduated from Musashino Art University with a major in printmaking in 2021, continuing into the university's master's program. Her bilingual upbringing and the movement back and forth between Korea and Japan are the explicit subject of her work.
For her undergraduate graduation project Park made a copper-plate print derived from a photograph of her grandmother, a first-generation Zainichi Korean, working at the Modaikogyo factory in Osaka during the war. The image — translated through aquatint and etching into the muted tonal range of intaglio — set the central concern of her practice: the intergenerational transmission of memory through documentary family photographs reworked as etched plates. Her recent prints continue to depict family members and childhood memories as the visible surface of the larger Zainichi history.
Her competition record has built quickly, growing out of an early illustration and picture-book background. In 2017 she received a Distinction at the Nami Island International Picture Book Illustration Concours, and in 2020 her work was selected for the 214th 'The Choice' in the illustration magazine published by Genkosha. In 2021 she was selected for the 5th Awagami International Mini-Print Exhibition and won the Excellence Award at the 8th Kanae Yamamoto Printmaking Grand Prize Exhibition. In 2023 she received the IAG Second Award and the IAG-Agariyashiki Award at the IAG Awards Exhibition, took the Excellence Award (with the Machida City Museum of Graphic Arts Award) at the 48th Annual Exhibition of the Japan Society of Printmaking, and mounted her debut solo exhibition, 'Self-Portrait,' at Gallery MoMo Projects in Tokyo. Her work was subsequently selected for the CWAJ Print Show in 2024 and 2025 and for the 4th PATinKyoto Print Art Triennale in Kyoto in 2025 at the Kyoto City KYOCERA Museum of Art.
The 'Self-Portrait' solo show at Gallery MoMo Projects (Tokyo, October–November 2023) consolidated her practice around portraiture — not as conventional likeness but as the act of carving a printing plate to register the imprint of an ancestor. Her output remains modest in scale, small to mid-format copper plates rather than large editions, but the technical assurance and biographical urgency of the work have made her a closely watched figure among emerging Japanese intaglio printmakers of her cohort.
Park maintains an online portfolio at parkaeri.com and an active social-media presence, and held her debut solo exhibition with Gallery MoMo Projects in Tokyo. As a third-generation Zainichi printmaker working in a medium with deep roots in both Japanese and Korean tradition, she occupies a distinctive cross-cultural position; her work is part of the larger turn in younger Japanese printmaking toward identity-based and historically reflexive subject matter.
Key Facts
- Active Period
- 1992
- Nationality
- 🇯🇵Japan
- Movement
- Contemporary Mokuhanga
- Subjects
- Portraits
- Works Indexed
- 2
Frequently Asked Questions
Aeri Park (born 1992, Tokyo) is a Korean-Japanese printmaker whose copper-plate intaglio practice traces her family history as a third-generation Zainichi Korean — Korean residents of Japan who came to the country during the colonial period or whose families remained after 1945. Born in Tokyo and raised in Gyeonggi Province in South Korea, she returned to Japan for art school and graduated from Musashino Art University with a major in printmaking in 2021, continuing into the university's master's program. Her bilingual upbringing and the movement back and forth between Korea and Japan are the explicit subject of her work.
Aeri Park was active born in 1992. They were associated with the Contemporary Mokuhanga movement.
Aeri Park'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.
Aeri Park's prints frequently feature portraits.
