Printmaking Path (版画道)

Printmaking Path (版画道) is a 2023 frottage on Japanese paper that exploits the double meaning of its title: 道 (dō) denotes both a literal road and a codified discipline, as in chadō or shodō. The work appears to record direct rubbings taken from a road surface — likely asphalt aggregate, expansion joints, or painted lane markings — transferred onto washi using graphite or ink and a hand-pressed pad in place of a baren. The resulting impression preserves the granular topography of the street as a found matrix, with high-contrast areas where the paper has registered raised edges and softer passages where it has skimmed depressions. The composition is governed by the irregularities of the source rather than by drawn elements, producing a horizontal field that reads simultaneously as abstraction and as topographic document. The print extends Wakaki's ongoing inquiry into what can function as a printing plate, a question she has previously tested using yen banknotes and her own body. Here the urban thoroughfare is enrolled into the same logic, and the play on 版画道 frames the daily walk through Kyoto as a printmaking practice.