RITUALS, POMEGRANATES AND THE CATHARSIS OF COMPOSITION: AN INTERVIEW WITH RIEKO

If one were to describe the sound of London-based Japanese-American artist RIEKO, the word catharsis wouldn’t feel out of place. Touching on themes of transformation, redemption and collective healing, her avant-garde fusion of left-field club music and classical compositions feels like a shard of lightning puncturing the very depths of our shared experience.

A graduate of the Royal College of Art and most recently a resident artist at the esteemed Institute of Contemporary Arts, RIEKO has continuously pushed the boundaries of what is expected of a traditional musician. Her work constantly draws from her experiences working across mediums, collaborating with experimental fashion designers from Central Saint Martins and avant-garde music video directors to create a cohesive artistic world that blends mythology with expressive movement and harrowing, emotionally exposed lyrics.

A self-described “ritual composer”, RIEKO’s creative expression extends beyond merely music. As the founding director of Diasporas Now, a platform dedicated to community-building and the empowerment of marginalised artists, she demonstrates a commitment to democratisation and to placing power in the hands of people rather than the institutions that too often seem to hold all the cards.

Her latest single, ‘Fruit’, taken from her sophomore EP Zakuro, continues her exploration of mythology and her roots in Buddhism and Shinto, recontextualising the story of the flesh-eating demon Kishibojin as a contemporary parable of vulnerability and spiritual transformation in times of crisis.

GATA: Hi RIEKO, thank you so much for your time. I just wanted to start with a question we ask everyone we speak to: could you please introduce yourself to the GATA audience?

RIEKO: Lately, I’ve been calling myself a “ritual composer”, working across experimental music, avant-classical composition and ritual performance. This is situated within a constellation of other practices, including automatic writing, healing workshops and artist-led curation.

I’m also Japanese, though I’ve lived most of my life across America and Europe. My cultural origin is a recurring theme in my work, drawing on mythological, folkloric and spiritual influences from Shinto and Zen Buddhism.

GATA: In the early days, was there a particular moment or person that inspired you to become an artist?

RIEKO: One person who had a significant impact on me was my favourite filmmaker David Lynch. I had the chance to ask him for life advice over a glass of wine when I was an undergraduate student in Paris. I was conflicted at the time wanting to pursue a range of creative interests but hesitated to call myself an artist. He encouraged me to fall in love over and over with whatever mediums and directions I felt intuitively drawn to and reassured me that this, as an artistic practice, is valid. David was the first person who helped me embrace my gifts as a multidisciplinary world-builder.

Now that I’ve chosen this art life, I’d say I’ve returned to making art for my inner child.

Recently, I found an old VHS tape of myself at the age of four in my grandmother’s home in Japan, just before I moved to America. I was haphazardly dressed in a pink princess costume, wild hair topped with a plastic tiara. I was dancing and singing around the kitchen in Japanese and bits of broken English, eyes frenzied and banging on surfaces with markers as drum sticks. I make art to keep this spirit alive within me, as a daily act of devotion and play.

Performance at Institute of Contemporary Arts (2025) ©Furmaan Ahmed

GATA: Recently you embarked on an artist residency at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts. How did this residency shape your current practice? What questions were you exploring during that period?

RIEKO: Having frequent access to the theatre of the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), with their incredible team of in-house audio visual technicians, has been an invaluable incubator for me to take creative risks and push myself improvisationally as a musician and performer in front of live audiences. Having so many public presentations throughout the year also helped prototype new collaborations, across everything from curation to movement direction, from set design to archival publication to fashion partnerships.

The residency was also an incredible R&D opportunity for the automatic writing methodologies that I employ in my workshops, through a term I led for the ICA Creatives educational programme. I began working with automatic writing in the art context through my MA dissertation at the Royal College of Art in 2021, and later developed them into public workshops I call SEANCES throughout my residency at the Tate Modern and Tate Britain across 2022-2023. Post-ICA I’ll be bringing the SEANCES to my next residency at Turner Contemporary in their autumn.

“What does it mean to birth anything into this world, a child, an artwork, a cultural movement, to the swan song of social and ecological collapse? What does it mean to hunger, in a ravenous culture of scarcity, separation, and lack? ”

— RIEKO

GATA: The ICA has long been a space for experimental work to challenge the conventional boundaries between art forms, how did working within that environment influence your practice?

RIEKO: I think it’s so interesting how quite a radical institution like the ICA is situated within eyesight of Buckingham Palace. As a space originally founded by a group of artists and writers in 1946, the boundary-challenging goes more than beyond art forms: it’s also a place that has historically challenged the infrastructure of how culture operates.

I first performed there through a showcase with the label Eastern Margins, and brought in my live art collective Diasporas Now the following year for our first UK tour. Then a couple years after that, the newly appointed Talks and Events Curator, Hannah Geddes, invited Diasporas Now to co-pilot a collective residency, with the support of Director Bengi Ünsal. Together we turned what was meant to be a programme of talks into multiple live activations and the alternative education programme with ICA Creatives across 2025-2026.

If you start to look at cultural infrastructure itself through the eyes of an artist, you realise nothing is fixed, only becoming. It’s a choose-your-own-adventure game.

“ I visited one of Kishibojin’s temples in Tokyo recently, and offered a prayer of gratitude for being the inspiration behind the single ‘Fruit’. She is an obscure deity for women, children, and childbirth that visited me in a meditation years ago, and stayed with me long enough that I knew I had to alchemise this entity into art. ”

— Rieko

GATA: Your recent photoshoot with Detroit Law feels like a departure from your earlier visual style. Lighter palettes and pastel tones at times flood the images. What was the feeling behind this shift in art direction

RIEKO: I’m trying to wear lighter colours now, a lot more white. I try not to obscure myself anymore, but reflect light and dress for protection. The world is already so dark anyways, I’d like to bring a little optimism into the mix.

And when I do wear colour, I’m drawn to visceral colours like crimson, or the more subtle hues you’d find in bruises, to pastel fades that were once intensely saturated, evoking the memory of ripe fruits. I’m drawn to drama and danger, with all the witchiness of a contemporary femme fatale.

GATA: The shoot features designs from Indépendantes de Coeur; how did this collaboration with Valeriance Venance come about? What is it about her designs that you think aligns so clearly with your own artistic expression?

RIEKO: Detroit, who I’ve worked with previously as a stylist, introduced me to her work. I love this kind of romantic, Victorian femininity in contrast with the macabre sharpness in the metalwork. Or the combination of leather and hardware, like armour encasing repurposed vintage linen that cradle the skin. There’s an elegant, theatrical tension to her work that I think resonates closely with my aesthetic, music, and artistic embodiment.

GATA: Throughout your journey, the visual side to your work seems almost as important as the music. Do you have a different creative process when approaching these two distinct mediums?

RIEKO: When I write music, the toplines and lyrics come to me in flashes of intuition, sometimes almost in complete form. I then just finesse it in the studio through vocalising, instrumentation, and production.

Same goes with the visuals. They come to me as colours or vague forms and symbols, often in dreams, and sometimes while automatic drawing in my notebook.

So my role is then to set the optimal conditions for myself, as a vessel, to channel audiovisual worlds through my unique skills, craft and worldview, alongside collaborators I hand-select for each project.

For this Zakuro EP for example, I worked very closely with producer Mariano Sibilia (also known as Yraki) on the music, and with director Jesse May Fisher on the art film for my single ‘Fruit.’ I knew I wanted Jesse for ‘Fruit’ while I was still writing the song, and knew I wanted Mariano on Zakuro from the first time we sat down and listened to my demos in our neighbourhood café.

GATA: The single ‘Fruit’ from your EP Zakuro draws from the Buddhist story of Kishibojin and her transformation from a child-devouring demon into a protector. What was it about this story that resonated with you?

RIEKO: I visited one of Kishibojin’s temples in Tokyo recently and offered a prayer of gratitude for being the inspiration behind this project. She is an obscure deity for women, children, and childbirth that visited me in a meditation years ago, and stayed with me long enough that I knew I had to alchemise this entity into art.

Originally, I had heard about Kishibojin through stories my mother would tell me as a child whenever we’d eat pomegranates. The fruit is a symbol of redemption after Kishibojin’s spiritual awakening, as a replacement for the human sacrifices she used to feed her children. The process of eating a pomegranate too is violent – your fingers stain blood red digging through the flesh, the juices burst between your teeth, sticky and sweet but bitingly tart. Pomegranates are a fruit that demands active participation.

What does it mean to birth anything into this world, a child, an artwork, a cultural movement, to the swan song of social and ecological collapse? What does it mean to hunger in a ravenous culture of scarcity, separation, and lack?

And on the other hand, to create something, through your own love, blood, sweat, and tears, to plant a garden in depleted soil: is this not devotion toward defiant hope for our metaphorical future progeny?

Often these entities come to me and leave me with more questions than answers. I’m okay with that.

GATA: Themes of death, rebirth, redemption and transformation seem to be prevalent in the EP. Are these themes a reflection of something personal? Or a commentary on society?

RIEKO: On my astrological birth chart, I have a stellium in my eighth house, or an intense concentration of planets and energies in the section that rules death, rebirth, and transformation. I’m also the kind of person that strangers are magnetised to at a crowded party to entrust with their deepest secrets.

I was born sick, to a father who passed away a couple of years after my birth, into families that already carried generational trauma of displacement and unspoken grief. I think facilitating personal, ancestral, and collective shadow work, for myself and for others, is just part of the reason I have reincarnated into this time, this life, this body.

Because if you learn how to live and die within this lifetime, you can learn how to live on the timeline of your most authentic purpose.

GATA: The music video for ‘Fruit’ is described as a “live ritual”. A ritual to what?

RIEKO: All of my visual work starts with some kind of physical ritual choreography. ‘Fruit’ began with this image of a long braid coming out of the mouth like an ouroboros. Jesse and I also wanted to convey this transformation from demon to deity, red to white to crystalline, from crouched creatural postures to a wide open chest with a light emanating from within the body. Creative contributions from choreographer Lewis Walker, costume designer Suzie Walsh, and makeup artist Dasha Taivas were also vital to the project.

I think the ritual and the song within the EP, is a moment of metanoia: a shift in perception, a breaking of cycles, an energetic clearing.

The song is a lot about the feminine energies within all of us that have been silenced, syphoned, and erased. ‘Fruit’ is a vulnerable call for reciprocity. The song ends a capella on the statement, “You need me.” As in, we can no longer continue existing in karmic cycles of extraction and destruction without honouring the sanctity of life on this planet.

GATA: Your work seems grand in scope, referencing myth, calling to “nurture hope for harvest in lifetimes beyond our own.” Most people have a hard time thinking beyond their immediate surroundings; what led you to this particular perspective?

RIEKO: There’s a refrain on another track on the Zakuro EP: Pray in the garden for fruit on your tongue. Planting a garden for fruit you may never taste, is the most powerful act of love as future ancestors on a dying planet.

I think the fact that I was born a highly sensitive person and experienced so much loss and displacement in the formative years, I was always keenly aware of my mortality. So being cognisant of what we will eventually leave behind, for our families, for our communities, for our ecosystems, for our land, becomes really essential to living a purposeful life on this earth.

The rest of the songs on Zakuro orbit ‘Fruit’ as the climax, with ‘Love’ blending heavy guitar with orchestral scores posing the existential questions from progeny to ancestor, to ‘Flower,’ a soft lament of knowing you are not buried but planted, and ‘Pendulum,’ an epic avant-classical meets left-field club finale, claiming that despite all odds there will be fruit in the garden, and kindred love through non-linear time.

GATA: Myth and spirituality can at times feel like a form of escapism. Is this something you have considered? Do you ever think about how to connect such ideas to contemporary life?

RIEKO: Myth and spirituality are intrinsically connected to performance, especially when thinking about traditional Japanese lineages like Noh theatre. These practices aren’t simulating ritual, but actually channelling spirits, deities and thought forms, in real time through masks, sound, movement, and presence in front of a live audience.

We reinforce myths about ourselves all the time – telling stories of linear time, progress, and eternal growth, or legitimising belief systems from global stock markets to astrological birth charts.

So to me the practice of myth-making, or mythopoesis, is less about escapism and more about playing with values and meaning. You remember your identity is just a collection of masks. At any point, you can create new narratives about your personal or collective identities that can wield macrocosmic influence.

GATA: I’d like to know a little bit more about Diasporas Now, the live art community you are a founding director of. What was the genesis of this community?

RIEKO: Diasporas Now was founded in 2021, originally as a live-streaming platform for live art by Global Majority artists, as a graduation project at the Royal College of Art. Since then, it’s become a bit of an institution in the wider London scene, as a space for artists to express themselves freely and authentically across disciplines, without needing to perform identity for primarily white gatekeepers and stakeholders in the art world. We’re now expanding from programming one-off events and museum lates to longer-term R&D residencies and creative education programmes.

At its core, Diasporas Now is a nomadic haven for oracles, intuitives, and visionaries, nourishing meaningful experiences in cultural spaces we have been historically underrepresented.

GATA: Through Diasporas Now, you have spent years building a creative space for other artists. How has helping support a creative community changed the way you think about your own artistic practice?

RIEKO: I always say, “create art fearlessly”, and if the infrastructure for the art you want to create doesn’t exist, then create that fearlessly too.

Diasporas Now, to me, is legacy work – this is so much more than just individual artistry. I’m just a nodal point in this mycelial flux that is contemporary culture, trying to offer as much beauty back to the collective as I can within this lifetime.

GATA: What’s next for you on your creative journey?

RIEKO: My next performances include 18 July at the Quarterhouse in Folkestone, playing with violinist Raven Bush for Profound Sound and Outlands Network; 25 July at IKLECTIK in London for Diasporas Now’s 5th anniversary birthday party, performing alongside co-founder and movement artist Lulu Wang; 8 August at The Photographer’s Gallery for a special festival I’m hosting for the Japanese Women Photographers exhibition; and later in November, a residency, exhibition, and release party at Metamorphika Studio centred on the collaborative world-building of Zakuro. Also, rumour has it, I’m working on my first book.

My EP Zakuro will be released on 30 October, via Diasporas Now.

INTERVIEW: JAMES ELLIOTT

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James Elliott5 July 2024