Package Craft | Takahashi Kazuma: The Evolution of an Empty Box

   Buddha statues, the twelve zodiac animals, robots — all folded out of the snack boxes you throw away without thinking. Nearly 90 works like these are on show at the Japanese cultural centre in Hoàn Kiếm, and this is the kind of exhibition after which you look at your own bin differently.

   The artist is Takahashi Kazuma, a winner of Japan's Good Design award for the method he invented and named “Package Craft”. The crucial part: he does not glue coloured paper over the boxes, he works directly with the images, lettering and original design already printed on the material — the logo, the typeface, the block of colour on the packaging become the details of the piece itself.

   What is on show
— Nearly 90 works: Buddha statues, the twelve Japanese zodiac animals, robots, characters drawn from pop culture
— New pieces built from packaging familiar in both Japan and Vietnam
— The artist's latest project: turning ukiyo-e prints and Japanese family crests (kamon) from flat images into three-dimensional models
— An “Art Tour & Workshop” programme with LOTTE Vietnam, where visitors make a stag beetle out of a Lotte ChocoPie box

   It suits families with children, anyone who likes craft and origami, and graphic designers — packaging here is read as a visual language. It also suits anyone thinking about waste: this is an argument for recycling that never once lectures you.

   An empty box is normally where something ends. Here it is where something starts. What will you see in your next biscuit tin?