IMC 2024 Echizen submission

Produced for the 2024 International Mokuhanga Conference held in Echizen, Fukui Prefecture, this print represents Bortoloni's contribution to the conference's juried exhibition program, which gathers practitioners from across the global mokuhanga community in the historic washi-producing region. As an MI-LAB alumna who completed her residency in Fujikawaguchiko in spring 2023, Bortoloni approaches the medium from a background in visual communication design, and her conference submissions tend to favor pared-down geometric vocabularies and considered negative space over the narrative pictorialism of traditional [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) categories such as [meisho-e](/glossary/meisho-e) or [bijin-ga](/glossary/bijin-ga). The Echizen context is materially significant: conference participants typically print on locally produced kozo washi, taking advantage of the long fibers and dimensional stability that suit careful registration and layered [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradations applied with the [baren](/glossary/baren). Within Bortoloni's wider practice, which moves between graphic design commissions and an expanding body of woodblock work begun in 2020 under Mara Cozzolino, the IMC submission functions as a public statement of her position within the contemporary mokuhanga revival, where Western-trained designers are extending the tradition's formal language.