Tokyo Artist Diaries: "Hajime" Magazine Collaboration with Tokyo Collective

(Own photo)

(Image credit: Julia Nascimento, Instagram: ns_julia)

April 2018 was the month where I participated in a group show for the very first time with Tokyo Collective also known as “トコ”.

What's Tokyo Collective?

Tokyo Collective is a group of local artists, foreign and Japanese that come together every few months to collaborate on a quarterly magazine, published by the artists' themselves. The purpose of this group is to offer a platform for artists to work together on an exciting project and create something beautiful.

(Image credit: Julia Nascimento, Instagram: ns_julia)

I was really lucky to be able to be apart of their very first publication called "Hajime". The literally meaning of "Hajime はじめ” means "to begin" which perfectly coincided with the artist brief we were given which was to recall our first impressions of when we first moved to Tokyo.

For me, I focused mainly on food illustrations as I was the most surprised by the ingredients and the whole dining culture in Tokyo in general.

(Image credit: Julia Nascimento, Instagram: ns_julia)

Many of the artists were from totally different backgrounds, some were originally Japanese but had grown up in an entirely different prefecture, some came from overseas but had already experienced the expat life in another part of Japan before coming to Tokyo and there were artists like me, who came to Tokyo from abroad. Everyone had their own unique backstory and it was really interesting to discover more about what each person wanted to share.