Taichi Hayashi, Bread Repair. pottery shards, flour, yeast, salt, water, 300 × 300 mm, 2026
The Invisible Dog (New York City) and BUoY Arts Center (Tokyo) are thrilled to present NAFAS, a month long exhibition and festival featuring artists inspired by food.
Welcome to NAFAS Tokyo / NAFAS東京へようこそ
A few years ago, I discovered a passion for cooking and the joy of gathering friends, artists, supporters, strangers, and loved ones around a table to share a meal I had prepared. Alongside my role as Director of The Invisible Dog Art Center, I created a new space, La Salle à Manger, known simply as SAM, an intimate dining room where only twelve guests could gather around a single table. It did not take long for that table to feel too small. I wanted to extend the invitation to many more guests.
That is how the first edition of NAFAS came to life in New York City in September 2022: a festival celebrating artists who make food their primary source of creation and inspiration, artists who transform every meal, every bite, every hunger, every craving into a work of art.
Through food, these artists offer us a unique way of reading the world through history, tradition, migration, resistance, innovation, and countless other stories. They possess that rare energy, that invisible gift, beautifully described by Palestinian author Reem Kassis: "in Arabic, nafas means breath or spirit. But in the context of cooking, nafas is the energy some people possess that makes their meals not only good but exceptional.
I dreamed of a second edition of NAFAS. I never imagined it would take place in Tokyo. Yet that dream became a reality when BUoY Arts Center generously opened its doors to The Invisible Dog.
From September 4 to 26, NAFAS Tokyo brings together sixty artists from Japan and around the world who share that same rare gift of transforming a material, an idea, or a gesture into a singular work of art. Created especially for the festival, their works, paintings, sculptures, photographs, drawings, videos, and site-specific installations will be presented alongside a series of performances, workshops, and events open to everyone. They all possess nafas.
As I write these words, I cannot help thinking of my mother, Lucie. She was an extraordinary cook, blessed with remarkable nafas. Whenever a young mother asked for advice about how to raise children, she would simply say: "Give them food and love. That's all they need."
I hope this edition of NAFAS Tokyo offers both—and perhaps a little more.
Lucien Zayan
Director of The Invisible Dog, curator of NAFAS
Featured artist in the exhibition:
2Fik, Ayaka Abe, Koken Arakawa, Jose Balado, Sama Beydoun, Patricia Borges, Katie Butler, Showgo Chazono, Sam Doubek, Danielle Durchslag, Mahka Eslami, Hélène Deléan & Clément Caignart, Julie Dind*, Carles García O'Dowd, Tara de la Garza*, Jude Griebel, Hou Haizawa, Miki Hakozaki, Souya Handa, Nanami Hayashi, Taichi Hayashi, Maki Hayashida, Kellyhosy, Edouard Laug, Lindsey Lou Howard, Hinanako Ichihara*, Kanto Iwamura, JBE Books, Oliver Jeffers, Yuka Kaneko, Haku Kato, Wakita Kizuku*, Michiko Kon, Taichi Kondo, Aya Kurashiki, Steven and William Ladd, Katherine Longly, Wen Wen Lu, Emiko Makino, Stéphane Margolis, Naoki Matsuda, Mizuumi*, Moéko, Jimena Mora, Stephen Morrison, Tomo Nagasawa, Yurie Nagashima, Aily Natori, Pedro Nekoi, Yu Ohara*, Kao Okada*, Tokio Oohara, Natsuka Osaki, Mac Premo, Emmanuel “Gus” Reckel*, Aaron Ruff, Fuku Sakuma*, Misato Sano, Kaoru Shibuta, Chatori Shimizu*, Chiharu Shinoda, Shu Shiraishi, Cal Stalvig, Kai Takeda, Kiyoshiro Tatekawa *, devon osamu tipp*, Nanami Tomita, TRUNK9 Collective, Karin Unemoto*, Antoine Wagner, Seitaro Yamazaki, Gertjan Zuilhof.
* Performances, workshops & events.
Click on >>> for details about each event.
Friday September 4, 7.30pm: Kiyoshiro Tatekawa >>>
Friday September 4, 8.30–9.30pm: Wakita Kizuku >>>
Saturday September 5, 2pm: Cal Stalvig >>>
Saturday September 5, 2.30–4pm: Cooking Club (Karin + Miki) >>>
Sunday September 6, 5pm: Yu Ohara >>>
Saturday September 12: Haku Kato >>>
Saturday September 12, 3–5pm: Tara de la Garza >>>
Sunday September 13, 12–3pm: Kao Okada >>>
Sunday September 20, 1–3pm: Mari Katayama >>>
Sunday September 20, 6pm: Chatori Shimizu + devon osamu tipp >>>
Wednesday September 23, 3–5pm: Café Mizuumi >>>
Thursday September 24, 7.30pm: Fuku Sakuma + Hinanako Ichihara>>>
Friday September 25, 6–7pm: Hélène Deléan + Clément Caignart >>>
Saturday September 26, 9am–8pm: Julie Dind >>>
Saturday September 26, 5–6pm: Wakita Kizuku (2nd performance) >>>
An essay about NAFAS Tokyo, by Emil Pacha Valencia
Like so many things, a flavor or a cuisine cannot be judged after a single tasting (…) The first time, we are always unsettled by a new flavor, by a cooking technique, by a combination of tastes we have never encountered before; we simply lack the words to describe it.
In her book Fade, author Ryoko Sekiguchi examines a notion that has long been associated with cuisines unfamiliar to us. She shows that when we describe a food as "bland," we reveal less about the cuisine we are judging than about the limits of our own perception. From this observation, and without lapsing into the kind of fatalism that suggests "we can never truly understand," or that such understanding is "reserved for connoisseurs," Sekiguchi offers a hopeful perspective: to truly grasp a cuisine, we must first unlearn our own culinary "grammar" and approach it with the humility, but also the optimism, of someone learning an unfamiliar language.
NAFAS is part of this movement. Founded in 2022 by Lucien Zayan, director of The Invisible Dog, a New York-based nonprofit arts organization, the second edition of the festival will take place in Tokyo from September 4 to 26, 2026, in partnership with BUoY Arts Center, an art center dedicated to emerging artists envisioned by Kako Kishimoto. Around sixty Japanese and international artists, working across a wide range of disciplines, will explore food in an attempt to answer a series of questions that are at once simple and fundamental. What does it mean to eat? What significance does a meal hold when you were born in Osaka or Paris, or when you come from Akron, Ohio? When you live alone in a converted factory in Brooklyn, or share a 40-square-meter apartment with four others in a danchi, a public housing complex on the outskirts of Tokyo? When we cook for someone, are we merely feeding them? And what becomes of food once it has been consumed? Does it cease to be food the moment it passes our lips? […]
Continue reading the full essay in English here
「多くの物事と同様に、味や料理も、一度味わっただけで判断できるものではない（……）。新しい味や調理法、それまで知らなかった味の組み合わせ等に初めて出会うと、人はいつも戸惑ってしまう。それを表現する言葉が見つからないのだ。」著書『Fade(味気ない)』の中で、作家の関口涼子は、長い間、馴染みのない料理と結びつけられてきたこの概念に注目し、ある食べ物を「味気ない」と評することが、評価対象の料理そのものについてではなく、むしろ私たち自身の限界について物語っていることを明らかにします。この事実を踏まえ、「理解できない」とか「通だけのもの」といった一種の宿命論に陥ることなく、著者は希望に満ちた展望を提示します。ある料理の本質を捉えるためには、私たち自身の食の「文法」から脱却し、未知の言語を学ぶ者の持つ謙虚さ そして希望 を持って歩みを進める必要があるのです。
NAFASもこの動きの一環です。ニューヨークを拠点とする非営利団体「The Invisible Dog」の代表、ルシアン・ザヤンによって2022年に創設されたこのアートフェスティバル、その東京での第２回開催は、岸本佳子が構想した新進アーティストに特化したアートセンター「BUoY Arts Center」との提携により、2026年9月4日から26日まで行なわれます。日本および海外から約60名のアーティストが、あらゆる表現媒体を駆使して「食」をテーマに制作に取り組み、単純でありながら根本的な一連の問いへの答えを探ります。「食べる」とはどういうことか？ 大阪やパリで生まれた人、あるいはオハイオ州アクロン出身の人にとって、食事にはどのような意味があるのでしょうか？ ブルックリンの旧工場を再利用した建物で一人暮らしをしている場合では、あるいは東京郊外の団地という公営住宅で40平方メートルの部屋を5人でシェアしている場合ではどうでしょうか？ 誰かのために料理を作る時、私たちは単にその人に食べ物を与えているだけなのでしょうか？ そして、その食べ物は体内に取り込まれた後、どうなるのでしょうか？ 食べ物は、口の中を通り過ぎた時点で、もはや食べ物ではなくなるのでしょうか？
A few words about NAFAS TOKYO by Kako Kishimoto, BUoY Artistic Director
Hands that prepare, bodies that gather, time shared around a table — this is where the festival began, in a scene almost too plain to notice. This September, The Invisible Dog and BUoY come together in Tokyo to co-present a festival built from art in many disciplines, all circling the subject of food. But to choose food as a theme, it turned out, brought with it a far thornier set of questions than it first appeared. What exactly are we sharing when we eat with someone else?
The potter and gourmet Kitaoji Rosanjin left behind the phrase “companions at one's side” (zahen shiyu) — the idea that a bowl, an ingredient, or even a single scroll of calligraphy kept close at hand can, without any formal instruction ever taking place, quietly become a teacher and a friend. Rosanjin spent his life pursuing how to draw out an ingredient's own inherent flavor without diminishing it; the more elaborately one seasons a dish, he believed, the further one drifts from its truth. This strand of Rosanjin's thinking resonates with an older Daoist and Zen sensibility: the taste of no taste. It is a state in which deliberate seasoning falls away and the ingredient's own flavor quietly comes forward on its own terms — one that, perhaps, opens in time beyond taste alone into something that takes in the touch and color of the vessel, its fragrance, even the air of the room itself. […]
Read the full text in English and Japanese here
料理する手、集う身体、食卓を囲む時間―このフェスティバルの出発点にあったのは、そんな素朴な光景だった。The Invisible Dog と BUoY は今年9月、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、東京でフェスティバルを共催する。だが「食」を主題に選ぶという判断は、思っていたよりもずっと厄介な問いを連れてきた。誰かと共に食べるとき、私たちはいったい何を分かち合っているのだろうか。
陶芸家であり美食家でもあった北大路魯山人は「坐辺師友」という言葉を残している。日々かたわらに置く器や食材、あるいは一幅の書画でさえも、正式に師事したわけではないのに、いつのまにか自分を導く師となり友となる、という考え方である。魯山人は、素材そのものが本来もっている味わいを損なわず、いかにそれを引き出すかにこだわり続けた人物でもあった。技巧を凝らせば凝らすほど、かえって遠ざかってしまうものがある―そうした魯山人の思想は、無味の味という老荘・禅的な美意識とも響き合う。それは、ことさらな味付けを退け、素材そのものの味わいが静かに立ち現れるような境地であり、やがて味覚だけにとどまらず、器の手触りや色彩、香りやその場の空気までも含めた体験へと開かれていくものだったのではないだろうか。[…]
About BUoY Arts Center
These ruins are full of history. The first floor was once a bowling alley; the basement, a public bath. Now, it has been renovated by its members — a diverse group: architects, artists, mangaka, (former) bank clerks, dramaturgs, baristas, dancers, critics, poets, accountants, painters, choreographers, lawyers, curators, directors, editors, researchers, translators, and set designers.
Their basement space was opened in July 2017, and the first-floor arts centre followed in October. Above, BUoY has a café, a gallery for art exhibitions, and a rehearsal space. The basement below, stretching out for 300㎡, is used for theatre and dance productions. There, they present cutting-edge productions that combine the diverse genres of arts: theatre, performance, dance, poetry, architecture, food, film…Their mission is to create encounters with 'otherness'.
A BUoY (/ˈbuːiː/) is a signpost that floats in the sea. As a reference point that does not sink even if submerged, it can also serve as a landmark for ships that have lost their way on the open water. This name declares their desire to guide and support young artists. It also represents their intention to disseminate art that is new, yet still immersed in the history of their home in Senjū: a land-ship floating between the Arakawa and Sumidagawa rivers. The idea that BUoY should be a place to encounter other values resonates with the tolerance of diversity that has flourished in this post town since the time of the samurai.
BUoY is a place that is skeptical of the obvious in Japanese society – its pursuit of compromise and preëstablished harmony – and instead hints at the view from a slightly more distant vantage point. It is a place where one can come to encounter something other than oneself. It is a place where one can come face-to-face with critical, cutting-edge art, full of intent.
From these ruins, they aim to help create a society that is more open to diversity.
The NAFAS edition in Tokyo has been made possible thanks to our generous donators
Gisela Blanc, Rima Abdul Malak, Katherine Fleming, Erin Hurley and Ashley Newton, Stéphane Magnan, Paz Corona, Danielle and Aamir, Vallejo Gantner.
Jill Benson, Monica Blanc, Nemo Hoffman, Mio Nakamura, Sara Lubtchansky Lindsay Grindstaff, Lili Chopra, Jude Griebel, Edouard Laug, Martine Uzan, Aaron Landsman, Tristan de Terves, Kyle Boyd, Laurence Herszberg.
Artist Sama Beydoun’s residency in Tokyo has been made possible thanks to the exceptional and generous support of Marwan Assaf and Rima Abdul Malak and the additional support Joanna Chevalier.
Some donors wish to remain anonymous.
Be a supporter of the Tokyo Edition of NAFAS.
The first edition of NAFAS Festival was created in September 2022 in New York City. 40 visuals artists were part of the exhibition and 17 events - cinema, theater, danse, music, talk… were offered to the public.
You can discover the full program here
Location
BUoY Arts Center
49-11, Senju-Nakacho, Adachi-ku,
Tokyo
Admission:
Free
Dates
September 4 - 26, 2026
Opening Reception
Friday September 4
6.30-9.30pm
Free Admission
Gallery Hours
Thursday & Friday: 2 to 7pm
Saturday & Sunday: 1 to 6pm
Tuesday - Wednesday: Private tours, groups, schools by appointment only
Closed on Monday