K. Aki Takebayashi is a visual artist and fashion designer whose work investigates his identity by expressing the unique confluence of cultures in his heritage. The son of a Japanese immigrant, raised in rural South Dakota, he combines traditional Japanese textile dyeing and garment construction techniques with the rough-and-ready utilitarian workwear of middle America.

His approaches also aim to explore gender presentation and provide love for bodies outside the “conventionally attractive” norms of fashion - those who do not fit the white, skinny, cis, able-bodied mold.

Aki’s work involves bringing together imagery from modern American pastoralism and rural culture, which dominated the environment he grew up in, with the Japanese heritage he has always been distanced from. In this way, his work is celebratory of his background and synthesizes two truly disparate influences into a unique and surreal rural fantasia.