The Invisible Dog and BUoY Arts Center are thrilled to launch an open call for NAFAS, a month-long festival in Tokyo in September 2026 where art and food share the same table, and where audiences are invited to savor multiple artistic propositions.
It will be the second edition of NAFAS after the successful edition in New York City.
In Arabic, nafas means breath—but also the gift some possess to elevate food beyond sustenance into something extraordinary.
In this spirit, the Tokyo edition 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. 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.
Words from Kako Kishimoto, artistic Director at BuOY Arts Center in Tokyo
This residency and festival connect The Invisible Dog and BUoY through arts, and food — through hands that prepare, bodies that gather, and time shared at the table.
To cook and to host is to create a space that no one owns, sustained instead by attention, care, and the willingness to share responsibility.
Across distance, we are building a trans-local ecology grounded in trust, labor, and the simple but radical act of eating or living together.
料理する手、集う身体、食卓を囲む時間－食をテーマとした多ジャンルにわたるアート作品を通して、The Invisible Dog と BUoY はこの度フェスティバルを共催致します。
料理をし、もてなすという行為は、所有という制約を離れ、配慮とケア、そして責任を分かち合う意思によって支えられる私的かつ公共的空間を生み出す可能性を秘めています。
距離を越えて私たちが築こうとしているのは、信頼と手間、そして共に食べる、あるいは生きるという素朴でありながら根源的な行為に根ざしたトランスローカルなエコロジーです。
The NAFAS edition in Tokyo has been made possible thanks to our generous donators
Gisela Blanc, Rima Abdul Malak, Katherine Fleming, J. Paul Getty Trust, Erin Hurley and Ashley Newton, Stéphane Magnan, Paz Corona, Danielle and Aamir, Vallejo Gantner.
Jill Benson, Monica Blanc, Nemo Hoffman, Mio Nakamura, Sarah Lubtchansky Lindsay Grindstaff, Lili Chopra, Jude Griebel, Edouard Laug, Martine Uzan, Aaron Landsman, Tristan de Terves, Kyle Boyd, Laurence Herszberg, Isabelle Jouanneau- Fertig.
Some donors wish to remain anonymous.
Our donors in 2026
If you want to be part of this edition of NAFAS, you can make a donation. There is no donation to big or too small, from $1 to $10,000. All donation are tax deductible. Thank you in advance
DONATE HERE
The application is open until April 30, 2026
Application is open
Apply here now
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)
4 -26 September 2026