IMC 2024 Echizen submission

This print was Kangas's contribution to the International Mokuhanga Conference (IMC) 2024 exhibition held in Echizen, the historic [washi](/glossary/washi)-papermaking region of Fukui Prefecture. The IMC, convened triennially, brings together printmakers working in the water-based Japanese woodblock tradition, and submissions to its juried exhibitions are typically printed on locally produced kozo washi using the [baren](/glossary/baren) and water-based pigments that distinguish mokuhanga from Western relief printing. As a Finnish artist trained outside Japan, Kangas belongs to the broad cohort of non-Japanese practitioners who have adopted mokuhanga in recent decades, applying its registration system ([kento](/glossary/kento)), [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradations, and absorbent paper to contemporary subjects rather than the kabuki actors or [meisho-e](/glossary/meisho-e) landscapes of the Edo and Meiji periods. The Echizen submission situates her practice within this international community and within a long-standing dialogue between the paper region and the printmakers who depend on its sheets. Within Kangas's wider career, the work reflects her shift from art education — she served as principal of the Kokkola Art School for Children and Youth from 1982 to 2011 — toward sustained engagement with the technical demands of Japanese woodblock printing.