WKM GALLERY is pleased to present K-NARF & SHOKO’s HATARAKIMONO PROJECT, a unique and captivating art project that delves into the Japanese culture in pursuit of perfection at work. This unprecedented photographic project is to create an Extra-Ordinary visual archive of workers’ portraits at a time AI is radically changing the way we work and therefore impact our daily life.

Started in 2016 in Tokyo, it took 3 years for artist-duo K-NARF & SHOKO to collect a hundred portraits of HATARAKIMONO, the Japanese workers, as every portrait had to be done directly in the street with a portable photography background and then manually processed as tape-o-graphs, a Neo-analogue photographic technique invented by K-NARF directly associated with the BRICOLAGE Art movement.

After the success of their project in Japan, K-NARF & SHOKO have extended their project to the world planning to travel to 20 countries / 50 cities. The second part of their project, called THE HATARAKIMONO PROJECT SATELLITE, started exactly one year ago (April 2023) and they have already collected more than 200 portraits with expeditions in Milano, New-York, Vancouver (Canada), Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Taipei, Singapore, Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh city, Angkor and Hong Kong.

The exhibition at WKM gallery is happening in two parts, the first one that already took place in March 2024 was created by K-NARF & SHOKO as an analog-immersive exhibition to present the making of their project from its origin to now. We are thrilled to announce that the second part will be on-view from 24 May through 1 June 2024 to present all the tape-o-graphic portraits of Hong Kong workers made by the artists during their stop-over last March. Artist-guided docent tours and demonstration workshops will be held in conjunction with the exhibition.

* “HATARAKIMONO”, はたらきもの / 働き者 is a special Japanese word that positively describes with respect someone who is considered as a hard worker. A person who enjoys doing their job, whatever it is, without pretension.