Biography
Hana Sawada (born 1990, Kyoto) is a Japanese contemporary artist whose practice originated in printmaking — she completed the first half of her doctoral program at the Graduate School of Art, Kyoto Seika University in 2016 — and has subsequently expanded into a hybrid mode that uses inkjet print, laser print, video, audio, and sculpture in installation works that investigate the chains of reproduction connecting found photography, printed materials, and screen-based image circulation. She is included in batch-06 on the basis of her selection for the 3rd PATinKyoto Print Art Triennale 2022, where her work is treated as 'expanded printmaking' that uses print logic — particularly indexicality and chains of reproduction — without conventional matrix-and-paper print form.
Sawada's principal long-running project is 'Gesture of Rally,' an investigative practice in which she identifies a small unidentifiable object that appears in a found photograph (typically taken from printed catalogues or image-sharing websites), then constructs an installation that traces the object's possible identities through inkjet prints, laser prints, video documentation, audio, modeling clay, and sculpture. The Gesture of Rally project numbers go up to '#1902' (2019) and '#1805' (2018), each consisting of variable-dimensions installations that present the artist's research process through prints and time-based media. The 2020 work 'Lightning Rods and Circumstances' continues the same investigative procedure, including a 26-minute 55-second video alongside the print and sculptural elements.
Sawada's curatorial framing — that the work represents an 'expanded concept of print | information' — has been important for her exhibition placement. The PATinKyoto recommender notes that she 'does not emphasize conventional printmaking techniques' but works across photography, video, internet information, and installations to explore the propagation and reproduction of images.
Her exhibition history includes solo shows 'Lightning Rods and Circumstances' at Gallery PARC Kyoto (2022), '360° Detour' at Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art (2020), and 'Bouncing Sounds of an Invisible Ball' at Gallery PARC (2018). Group exhibitions include the Aichi Triennale 2019, the Gunma Biennale for Young Artists 2019 (Encouragement Award), 'Frozen Window' at CAGE GALLERY Tokyo (2019), 'Seeing is Touching' at Tokyo Photographic Art Museum (2022), 'Reproduction' (Shiga, 2016), 'Gesture of Rally' (Kyoto, 2017), '1floor2017' (Hyogo, 2017), 'Place｜BA' (Aichi, 2017), and 'showcase #7 PHOTO & SCAN' (Kyoto, 2018). She also participated in 'New Cosmos of Photography 2017' at the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, where she received the Excellence Award.
Sawada is represented by Gallery PARC in Kyoto and is one of the curators of a 2025 exhibition on photography and printmaking, which extends her ongoing critical concern with how the boundaries of print are negotiated in contemporary practice. The combination of her 'expanded' practice, her institutional exhibition record at Hiroshima MOCA and the Aichi Triennale, and her PATinKyoto and KG+ Kyotographie+ inclusions establish her as one of the more visible mid-career Japanese artists working through the print-photography boundary.
Key Facts
- Active Period
- 1990
- Nationality
- 🇯🇵Japan
- Movement
- Contemporary Mokuhanga
- Works Indexed
- 3
Frequently Asked Questions
Hana Sawada (born 1990, Kyoto) is a Japanese contemporary artist whose practice originated in printmaking — she completed the first half of her doctoral program at the Graduate School of Art, Kyoto Seika University in 2016 — and has subsequently expanded into a hybrid mode that uses inkjet print, laser print, video, audio, and sculpture in installation works that investigate the chains of reproduction connecting found photography, printed materials, and screen-based image circulation. She is included in batch-06 on the basis of her selection for the 3rd PATinKyoto Print Art Triennale 2022, where her work is treated as 'expanded printmaking' that uses print logic — particularly indexicality and chains of reproduction — without conventional matrix-and-paper print form.
Hana Sawada was active born in 1990. They were associated with the Contemporary Mokuhanga movement.
Hana Sawada'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.
