With choreography by Yuka Kobayashi and costumes by Taisuke Abe, She de cusu oh chee! is a Japanese performance troupe of escapist alter egos [read more]

Kathy’s eerie and ritualistic performances are like nothing else; think moulin rouge meets meets victorian morality meets lucifer rising. And they are one of our first confirmed guests for the huge Kirin Big In Japan event that is taking place this December at CarriageWorks [read more]

“To be there where I think I am not, to disappear where I think I am, that is what matters.”

Like her fellow Japanese self-costuming photographic artists Yasumasa Morimura and Tomoko Sawada,  Kimiko Yoshida’s work shows that art is about transformation and photography, in particular, is a medium of performance. Because her bodily decoration and physiognomy are so motley and elastic she would be beyond recognition in her hundreds of self-portraits, were it not for their uniformly square, front-angle head-and-shoulders format. But then, ‘self-portrait’ isn’t really the right term; these are not images of herself but of costumes; fantasy selves have swallowed her up completely. [read more]

“But you are still thinking in terms of a life with a real face. The mask does not deceive and is not deceived. How about putting on a new mask, turning over a new leaf, and starting another life?”

(Kobo Abe, The Face of Another)

A look back at a look book from 2006, marking the first collection from Fugahum; a fashion label which frequently crosses over into the realms of  visual art and  instillation.

After 6 years as a designer with Yohji Yamamoto, Asuka Yamamoto formed Fugahum with Akiyoshi Mishima, an artist, art director, graphic designer, film director and VJ. Their work together is based on the notion of a fictional nation named ‘Fugahum’, and their aesthetic nestles somehwere at the boarders of street and fantasy; gothic and futuristic; macarbe and beautiful [read more]