Intriguingly intense yet candid: The Kamano woman is a mysterious subject floating on thin air, however leaving you behind with a strong feeling of empowerment.

Playing with the images of victim and perpetrator, the pictures quickly unfold an erotica of its own. @erikakamano masters the reminiscence of great Japanese and Chinese cinematic cult classics whilst seducing you with modern attitude.

What are the five items you always buy when grocery shopping?

Avocado, eggs, enoki mushrooms, almond milk and rice :)

What inspires you the most at the moment - midst all of this COVID-19 and Brexit situation?

Movies and photo-books. My close friends as well. They are all so amazing, motivating and creative. I feel like everyone around me is using this time to make new things!

You portray women a lot. They come along with attitude, strong looks and fantastic make-up. I would already call it the 'Kamano™️ Signature' - you definitely have one already. Tell us a bit about your creative process and the work behind it.

I think I just try create an image of my dream world or ideal world. Colors are my favorite thing, and I really try to capture people in the sunlight (whenever possible) as I love when things are high contrast and saturation. Most of my favorite movies have similar color themes to my photographs. An movie I recently watched is Dumplings by director Fruit Chan. The story itself is pretty dark and can be very triggering for some people (so maybe google storyline before), but the colors and angles used in the film are so striking and super inspiring for me. I then started watching more Fruit Chan movies, even without the subs as I’m obsessed with his vision.

What is your favorite tv-show/book or entertainment piece at the moment?

I really am loving Tumblr hehe, I gathering a lot of visual information from there. I’ve been using it for the past 12 years. I love buying photo-books whenever I have money to do so, but they are so expensive. I really love self portraits right now so I’m looking into a lot of self-portrait work by my favorite artists, one being Yurie Nagashima. I love a lot of old horror movies. My friend Clay and I have a huge list of disgusting and weird old old horror movies we are using as references for a short film we are trying to start this year. |’ve stopped reading magazines, not my thing.

You soon will have your first solo exhibition in Berlin. Tell us a bit more about it. When is it gonna be, how will it look, what can we expect. What comes next.

Yeah. I'm super excited about this! It will show the best of my work so far. A mix of images absorbed in saturated color, set in a surreal eerie atmosphere. The exhibition will be this spring at the newly opened Unpaper Gallery in Berlin. You can check out my latest prints on their website, they turned out very nice: https://unpaper.gallery/collections/erika-kamano