|Harajuku nope-ople|

2010 - ongoing

fashion magazines, electric eraser, eraser shavings, bottles, sealing wax, wooden boxes

Young fashionistas in the Harajuku district of Tokyo are meticulously erased out of printed photographs using an electric eraser in search for their true nature hidden underneath the layers of fashion.

The work alludes to suminuri kyokasho, a practice during the American occupation of Japan after WWII where Japanese students and teachers blackened out sections of textbooks referring to imperial and militaristic ideologies; this was done primarily as a self-censorship
exercise.  However, with this series of work, manipulation of printed magazines and books is not a mechanism for suppression, but
rather a means for liberation.

The eraser shavings are sealed inside of glass bottles and prepared for their eternal afterlife.