INJURY and REAL PARENT are Australia-based with experience in 3D modeling, fashion, art, and music. Known for unconventional approaches and investigating the beauty of virtual and reality, their exhibition at the KURA marks their Tokyo debut.
In this interview, we hope that you can feel a little bit more closely connected with INJURY and REAL PARENT.
1. How did your collaboration begin, and what initially connected your creative visions?
Our collaboration evolved naturally from the different stages of our creative lives. INJURY represents our fashion identity, while REAL PARENT is the home for our 3D art and music. We found a unique synergy in pairing 3D animation films with our fashion brand and created animation works for our Australian Fashion Week shows. Beyond the aesthetic connection, this approach is far more sustainable; digital videos travel easily and aren't bound to a single venue or city. We love how world-building in a digital medium can be expanded over time with new input. Today, both collectives have lives of their own, earning international film awards and sparking global collaborations that we are incredibly grateful for.
2. When you start a project, do you think digitally first, materially first, or both simultaneously?
We like to challenge the boundaries of both worlds. Our process is rooted in surrealism—the space between dreams and reality. We find it incredibly fun to make our 3D work look hyper-realistic while making real-life objects feel surreal. Central to our thinking is the question whether avatar can possess a soul.
3. The concept of "contemporary talismans" appears central to the exhibition. What does a talisman mean to you?
To us, a talisman is about the physical impact and the shift in perspective it creates for the viewer. We specifically design the positioning of our sculptures so that people must look up or look through them to view our digital projections. In this way, the viewer's physical movement and perspective become a vital part of the artistic experience itself.
4. Why did the heart become the central motif?
The heart is the junction where emotional, cognitive, and technological systems meet. In the INTERHUMANA series, we map different states: the transparent brain-heart for wisdom, the black heart for synthetic AI consciousness, and the red heart for the raw human core. In our films, we observe how these different hearts interact; characters are seen protecting or guarding them, highlighting the intrinsic value of these different states of being.
5. Do you see AI consciousness as something that will merge with human emotion, compete with it, or transform it?
We view it as a transformation. Our work explores how synthetic consciousness isn't necessarily an "other," but a new layer of the human experience that redefines how we perceive our own internal systems.
6. How do you interpret the idea of a "digital soul"?
In our work Silver Souls, we explore this through an underworld of figures transmitting energy to the world "above". It raises the question of whether digital spaces truly offer freedom, or if they contain the same "glass ceilings" and hierarchies found in the physical world. The "digital soul" is the spark within that system, navigating those invisible levels.
7. What interests you about turning symbolic objects into functional items?
We want to redefine the boundaries of wearable art and sculpture. By creating items like the heart-shaped bag, we are testing how people perceive these objects—where they draw the line between a fine art sculpture and a fashion wearable. It brings the "high art" of the gallery into the ritual of daily life; the viewer doesn’t just observe the concept, they interact with it as a functional tool.
8. Do you think art has a role in helping people understand or resist invisible systems of power?
Art makes the invisible visible. By externalizing internal systems like cognition and AI through sculpture, we allow people to confront and question the technological structures that usually operate unseen in the background of their lives.
9. If visitors leave the exhibition with one question in their minds, what would you hope that question is?
Did I just see the artwork, or did the artwork see me?
