Black Walks is a series of urban walks, and the films, objects, and sartorial experiments that emerged from this piece. The main theoretical object is a black flag.

The first walk happened on 21 July (my birthday) 2012 while I was living in Japan. I was both unsettled and intrigued by the perpetual experience of being labelled a “foreigner” (gaijin). Walking through the city carrying a large black flag came from a desire to assert visibility in public space, and to draw attention to those, who like me, don’t have a specific national flag, dress, hometown or identity to cling to. I was also responding to Yayoi Kusama’s ‘Walking Piece’ (1966), where she dressed in a kimono to photograph a walk in New York.

Since 2012, Black Walks has traversed four major cities, tracing paths that remember each place’s unique political histories, encountered in its paths, alleys, riverbanks, a testament to routes of immigration (London), politics of division (Berlin), and topographies of protest (Paris).

The black flag reimagines Kazimir Malevich’s radical painting Black Square. Like the painting, it embodies a break from representation and challenges fixed notions of identity and nationalism, to go beyond borders and discover an inner contentment and peace encountered in the simple action of walking. The public’s interpretations of the meaning and symbolism of the black flag vary by context often causing confusion due to the lack of an overt message: in Berlin, it evoked memories of the hidden machinations of the Stasi secret police; in Paris, it stirred associations with revolution; in Tokyo it caused confusion with the police force, who didn’t know what to make of it and whether it represented grounds for stopping or arresting me; in London the public was largely too ‘knowing’ and indifferent, apart from the city’s ‘street residents’ who were intrigued by it.

These walks — undertaken to date in Tokyo, London, Paris, and Berlin — probe the spaces between belonging and invisibility, questioning how outsiders navigate the political dimensions of citizenship.

In 2015, Black Walks became part of Field Trip Project Asia, curated by Daisuke Takeya. A backpack containing a a walking score, the Drapo photo series, and a black flag inscribed with the words Walk for World Peace’ travelled across Asia, being activated by the public, in Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia. This utopian gesture emphasizes action over rhetoric — an invitation to walk the walk instead of talking the talk. It is a pursuit of collective transformation that happens through the body.

Black Walks is open to revival at any moment…