TORBJØRN RØDLAND: “TOKYO TRICKSTER”
APRIL 8-10, 2026, TOKYO, JAPAN

REGISTRATIONS ARE CLOSED.

[3-DAY WORKSHOP]
TORBJØRN RØDLAND: “TOKYO TRICKSTER”
APRIL 8-10, 2026, TOKYO, JAPAN

“The trickster can be seen as a living, narrative example of the abstract, philosophical arguments put forward by French deconstructionists. Literary analyses of trickster figures often explicitly describe them as a critical stance that deconstructs universal Western knowledge schemes.

In Tokyo Trickster we will instead look to popular Japanese culture for the disruption of  familiar narratives and the challenging of binary oppositions. This 3-day workshop in Tokyo is for those curious about how culture shapes perception, how moral frameworks differ across societies, and how photography can become a tool for questioning one’s own inherited ways of seeing the world.” – Torbjørn Rødland

Through roundtable conversations and city explorations with an assignment, participants will be encouraged to photograph Tokyo with an eye toward masquerade and symbolism—blurring the line between fantasy and everyday life. The workshop will also include a one-on-one portfolio review and a final group critique. Participants will receive each other’s as well as Rødland’s responses to their work.

Photographers will be required to bring their own digital camera and laptop to work on their assignment. Print portfolios (11×14 in. max size) will be preferred over digital ones, but not required for their one-on-one conversation with Rødland.

All images © Torbjørn Rødland. Top Banner Image: “Muddy Socks” (2023); Bottom Banner Image: “Sitting Pierrot” (2025)

ABOUT TORBJØRN RØDLAND: 

Torbjørn Rødland (b. 1970, Stavanger, Norway) makes photographic images that pointedly address their viewers, evoking a wide range of emotional and intellectual states. Curiosity, humor, criticality, artifice, reverence for the natural world, and romanticism appear throughout his work and often in the same image. Rødland also emphasizes the formal attributes of his photographs, pushing the medium toward modes of visual expression more commonly associated with painting, and forging links between twentieth-century art photography and twenty-first-century approaches to image-making common to advertising and social media. Often prompted by non-photographic imagery that he transforms into real-world photographic subjects, Rødland portrays scenes designed to generate psychological reaction through his depiction of highly sensory qualities. The physicality present in the work is driven by his use of film-based cameras and chemical darkroom processes. Rødland has been the subject of solo exhibitions including Oh My God You Guys, Le Consortium, Dijon, France (2023); Bible Eye, The Contemporary Austin, TX (2021); Fifth Honeymoon, a traveling exhibition produced as a collaboration between Bergen Kunsthall, Norway, Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm, Sweden, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki, Finland (2018–2019); THE TOUCH THAT MADE YOU, Fondazione Prada, Milan, Italy (2018) and the Serpentine, London, England (2017); Back in Touch, C/O Berlin, Germany (2017); and Blue Portrait (Nokia N82), Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (2016). Notable group exhibitions include Before Tomorrow – Astrup Fearnley Museet 30 Years, Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo, Norway (2023); What People Do for Money, Manifesta 11, Zurich, Switzerland (2016); LIT, 9th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, Germany (2016); and 48th Venice Biennale, Italy (1999). His work is in the permanent collections of museums including Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo, Norway; Malmö Art Museum, Sweden; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, IL; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands; and Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY. Rødland lives and works in New York.

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