Ikoku
Artist's book, photography, text and synthetic images · 2025–2026
Ikoku emerges from an archive of roughly 6,000 images produced by Romy Pocztaruk over two years of research into the Japanese community in São Paulo.
This process gave rise to Eu Nunca Fui para o Japão, a project developed before the artist's first trip to the country.
In 2025, during a residency in Japan, Romy expands this archive with new photographs and confronts the imaginary formed at a distance with the experiences, landscapes and situations encountered in the Japanese territory.
By bringing together images made in São Paulo and in Japan, Ikoku constructs a field of contact between places, times and forms of belonging.
The book does not seek to establish an authentic origin nor to oppose copy and model, diaspora and territory of origin.
On the contrary, it investigates how practices, gestures, architectures, objects and memories are transformed as they circulate between distinct contexts.
Romy Pocztaruk · contato@romypocz.com · Instagram @romypocz