Biography
Chiaki Shuji (集治千晶) is a Kyoto-based Japanese contemporary artist whose practice centers on printmaking, a discipline she has pursued for close to three decades. Born in Kyoto in 1973, she trained in printmaking through both undergraduate and graduate study, and she has taught printmaking as a part-time lecturer at Kyoto Seika University. Her imagery favours flowers, the universe, sparkling lights, and the sky, and her work is known for the way freely drawn line and luminous colour combine — an approach that brings out a distinctly Japanese sensibility about colour, where pigment can seem to gather rather than simply to be applied.
In 2013 Shuji was one of the thirteen artists selected for "Redefining the Multiple: 13 Japanese Printmakers," a travelling exhibition co-curated by Hideki Kimura, a professor at Kyoto City University of Arts, and Sam Yates, director of the Ewing Gallery of Art & Architecture at the University of Tennessee, and organized by the Ewing Gallery. The show brought together printmakers who push the boundaries of traditional technique, and it was presented at several American venues, including the Bates College Museum of Art, which holds her work in its collection.
Shuji exhibits with gallery KUNST ARZT in Kyoto, where her recent shows include the 2025 exhibition "華やぎの祭壇" (Radiant Altar). Across her career she has continued to work between printmaking and related media, extending the concerns of her prints — colour, light, and the natural world — into new forms.
Key Facts
- Active Period
- 1973
- Nationality
- 🇯🇵Japan
- Movement
- Contemporary Mokuhanga
- Works Indexed
- 1
Frequently Asked Questions
Chiaki Shuji (集治千晶) is a Kyoto-based Japanese contemporary artist whose practice centers on printmaking, a discipline she has pursued for close to three decades. Born in Kyoto in 1973, she trained in printmaking through both undergraduate and graduate study, and she has taught printmaking as a part-time lecturer at Kyoto Seika University. Her imagery favours flowers, the universe, sparkling lights, and the sky, and her work is known for the way freely drawn line and luminous colour combine — an approach that brings out a distinctly Japanese sensibility about colour, where pigment can seem to gather rather than simply to be applied.
Chiaki Shuji was active born in 1973. They were associated with the Contemporary Mokuhanga movement.
Chiaki Shuji'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.