Poetics

Poetics is a mokuhanga print by Christine Adame, an American practitioner of the Japanese water-based woodblock tradition whose work was selected for the 2021 International Mokuhanga Conference exhibition in Nara. The title's reference to poetic theory or lyrical expression suggests an image concerned with the formal qualities of mokuhanga itself — rhythm, repetition, layered transparency — which the medium produces through successive impressions of carved blocks onto dampened washi. Mokuhanga's distinctive softness derives from water-based pigments worked into paper fibers under baren pressure, rather than sitting on the surface as oil-based inks do. This material quality has made the technique attractive to contemporary artists interested in the relationship between mark, surface, and process. Adame's participation in the IMC juried exhibition places her within the international community of practitioners who have, since the early 2010s, formed a distinct contemporary mokuhanga movement extending the medium beyond its historical Edo-period genres of bijin-ga, yakusha-e, and meisho-e into abstract, conceptual, and personal territory.