Why Frida Kahlo? Her self-portraits embody all the aspects of life–love, agony, pain, sickness and joy–in a very fierce way. She was in desperate need to show her face in her work. She was afraid to be forgotten.
Are you, too? People think [all self-portraitists] enjoy the exposure, but we don’t. I hate it.
You don’t look like you hate it. I hate it, therefore I do it.
How does a 50-year-old man in Osaka turn into Frida Kahlo? I look at Kahlo’s pictures, to see how to work with them. I dress myself up, create the background, take pictures. My transformation [is] more “real” to me than the fact that I’m a 50-year-old man in Osaka.
Will you still make self-portraits as an old man? That would be so much fun. And as I get older, my sense of beauty will continue to change.
You play women. Do you wish you were one? Are you gay? Or are you just trying to confuse your audience? Beauty is something that stirs up a commotion. It’s like the beach. When the water hits the shore you see a commotion, and I find that beautiful. In Japanese we have a phrase to describe something weird and hard to pin down: “the thing one can’t determine if it belongs to the ocean or to the mountain.” That’s me.
