Proposed project for SOCIAL DIVE 2027, Tokyo
Permission to Belong
Permission to Belong extends my ongoing site-responsive self-portrait project Incongruous into a month-long engagement with Tokyo. Beginning in the alleys of Nihonbashi, I will repeatedly walk, observe, build relationships, and allow local knowledge, access, restriction, and permission to shape where and how the work can occur.
My body is the constant element. The social and spatial conditions around it change. Some works may involve concealment, partial exposure, or controlled nudity in private or permitted settings; others may depend on thresholds, barriers, architecture, or chance encounters. Rather than arriving with predetermined images, I want the project to develop through repeated presence and negotiated access.
These works are not templates for what will be recreated in Tokyo. They show the existing method: entering a place, reading its rules, and allowing the environment to alter how the body is seen. Permission to Belong shifts that method from a largely solitary practice toward one shaped by local relationships, permissions, and repeated engagement with place.