Heritage

Heritage is a mokuhanga print by American artist Christine Adame, whose practice was recognized through inclusion in the juried exhibition of the 2021 International Mokuhanga Conference in Nara, Japan. The title indicates engagement with ancestry, inheritance, or cultural continuity — themes that resonate doubly within the medium itself, given that mokuhanga is a Japanese tradition being practiced and reinterpreted by an American maker. The water-based woodblock technique uses cherry or shina plywood, sumi or pigment ground with rice paste, and the baren to transfer ink onto dampened washi. The technique permits layered transparencies and bokashi gradations that lend themselves to imagery built from accumulated memory or genealogical reference. Adame's work belongs to the broader contemporary movement of non-Japanese mokuhanga practitioners who have embraced the medium since the founding of organizations like the International Mokuhanga Conference in 2011, contributing to a global redefinition of what woodblock printing's traditional materials and processes can express in the present.