Photo Maki Indo
The Invisible Dog (New York City) and BUoY Arts Center (Tokyo) are thrilled to invite you for the closing day of NAFAS, on Saturday September 26, from 9am to 10pm.
NAFAS Tokyo is coming to its final day. For four weeks, BUoY has been breathing with artists, neighbors, collectors, friends, strangers, food, sounds, smells, gestures and conversations.
We remember the opening night, when hundreds of people moved through the building, from the café to the galleries, down into the basement, discovering artworks, performances, each other.
We remember ramen and family recipes covering walls, a skull made of grains of rice slowly being eaten by insects, an artwork waiting to be licked, cookies being made, candles taking shape, omusubi being shaped, bread prepared from the most unexpected ingredients.
We remember poems and bodies moving through the space, projections flickering underground, music filling the basement, a meal performed again and again in the café. We remember people sitting around tables with strangers and leaving as something closer to friends.We remember artists arriving from Japan, Lebanon, France, the Philippines, Hong Kong, the United States and elsewhere, carrying artworks, suitcases, ingredients, stories, and pieces of home.
We remember the artists who stayed with us, lived with us, worked late into the night, cooked, talked, laughed, worried, changed things, repaired things, and started again the next morning.We remember dinners becoming performances and performances becoming meals. We remember walking through Senju, moving from curry to books, from galleries to small rooms, discovering that an exhibition does not have to stop at the door of an arts center.
We remember all the small gestures that were never written in the program: someone bringing food, someone lending a tool, someone translating a sentence, someone carrying a chair, someone staying a little longer.
We remember children looking closely, older visitors asking questions, artists meeting artists they had never met before, conversations beginning in Japanese and ending somewhere between English, French, gestures and laughter.
We remember the heat of Tokyo, the rain, the humidity, the long installation days, the late nights, the first visitor of the day and the last person reluctant to leave.
We remember Senju slowly becoming part of NAFAS — and NAFAS becoming, for a brief moment, part of Senju.
And perhaps what we will remember most are the things we could never have planned: the accidental meetings, the unexpected friendships, the quiet moments, the generosity of people making room for one another.
On Saturday September 26, we gather one last time.
Exhibition, performances, workshops, food, drinks, conversations and simply the pleasure of being together. One more breath.
Come spend the final day with us. Come make one last memory of NAFAS TOKYO.
(Text freely inspired by Je me souviens by Georges Perec
Program Saturday September 26, 2026, from 9am to 10pm
BUoY will open its doors at 9:00 AM for Julie Dind’s durational performance. Over the course of nine hours, Dind will wash, peel, cut, and display hundreds of vegetables, exploring food, ritual, time, and collective experience. Alone at the heart of BUoY’s vast concrete basement, the artist’s solitary presence becomes at once fragile and persistent. Visitors are invited to enter, leave, and return as the work slowly unfolds, and as the passing hours transform both the performance and the space around it.
Throughout the day, NAFAS exhibition, bringing together artists from Japan and around the world, will remain open. A last chance to acquire an unique piece of art from contemporary artists. Check out the price list here.
At 3:30 PM, French-American baker Emmanuel “Gus” Reckel will lead a"Kita-senGus” flat bread workshop, sharing some of the technics, flavors, and ideas he discovered during his month-long residency at NAFAS. His time in Tokyo has been shaped by collaborations with local bakers and by inspiration drawn from many of the artists taking part in the festival. The workshop is free and open to everyone.
At 5:00 PM, 5:25 PM, and 5:50 PM, director Wakita Kizuku will present a new version of the work first created for the NAFAS Opening Reception, Meals In Empty (or absence of us makes us), performed by Kanon Kobayashi with the participation of Till Buergin. Each performance lasts approximately ten minutes.
Around 6pm, Julie Dind will still be in the basement, nearing the end of the performance she began nine hours earlier. Drinks will be served. Food will be simmering on the stove.
As the sun goes down and darkness begins to settle over the city, artist Kiyoshiro Tatekawa will offer a new version of Gaze Material, this time unfolding through the café and galleries: an immersive collision of moving images and live music, where the city, the zoo, and the human gaze become mirrors of one another.
Later in the evening, composer and performer devon osamu tipp will present two short works for shakuhachi, the traditional Japanese end-blown bamboo flute:
Kumoi Jishi 雲井獅子 - Kinko-ryu 琴古流
Kumoi Jishi (trans. Lion's Dance) is a shakuhachi solo that traces its origins to Itchoken tample in Kyushu. It is a celebratory piece that depicts a dragon or lion dancing in the clouds.
Universal Flute − Henry Cowell (1897-1965)
Composed in 1946 by Henry Cowell's shakuhachi teacher for Tamada Nyohyō, Universal Flute is the first known work for the instrument by a non-Japanese composer
And somewhere before, after, or in between, Sumire Muratsu will serve a vegetable curry to everyone, prepared by Lucien Zayan, who will exchange his curator’s hat for another one he loves just as much: that of chef. The curry will be made with Julie Dind’s vegetables and served with pieces of Emmanuel “Gus” Reckel’s Kita-senGus” bread. It will be cooked with love from a recipe shared by a poet, an artist, and a friend who has been present in spirit and in heart throughout NAFAS: Ryoko Sekiguchi.
At 10pm. NAFAS Tokyo will close, and we may continue the party somewhere around Senju…
Location
BUoY Arts Center
49-11, Senju-Nakacho, Adachi-ku,
Tokyo
Admission:
Free, donations are welcome
Dates
Saturday September 26, 2026
from 9am to 10pm