The Invisible Dog (New York) and BUoY Arts Center (Tokyo) are launching a call to artists for NAFAS, a Tokyo month-long festival in September 2026 where art and food share the same table, and where audiences are invited to savor multiple artistic propositions.
In Arabic, nafas means breath but also the gift some possess to elevate food beyond sustenance into something extraordinary.
In this spirit, the festival will bring together artists, performers, scholars, writers, poets, and chefs to consider food through multiple forms of art.
NAFAS contains multiple questions: What does it mean to grow? To eat? To nourish and be nourished? To gather at a table, to prepare, to digest, to nap, to burp, to fart?
The Japanese edition of NAFAS calls to all artists willing to enter the territory of food, to reconsider their practice through its lens. It is an invitation to think alongside the body and what moves through it—what we cultivate, ingest, transform, and discard. To revisit not only the nourishing meal but also the swallowed pill, the farmed insect, the fermented waste, the genetically modified seed. To trace the movements between soil and nourishment, and everything before, between, and after.
NAFAS is both exhibition and gathering. Artists from Japan and elsewhere will present new and existing works, while the festival extends beyond the gallery through community-oriented events, performances, cooking classes, film screenings, musical concerts, and conversations.
This is the second edition of NAFAS, first created in 2022 in Brooklyn, New York.
Apply opens soon
Deadline: April 30, 2026
If you have any question regarding the call for artists or the festival please feel free to email
lucien@theinvisibledog.org
NAFAS Festival
BUoY Arts Center (Tokyo)
September 2026