sakamoto 
BABU is a street artist, skateboarder and tattooistfrom Kokura, Kitakyushu, who has been driven by wanderlust since primary school age. Born in 1983, he started street painting at 14, often heading out alone to tag buildings, tourist facilities and other off-limits sites. As a skater, he spray-paints while in motion. It’s not work you will find in a conventional gallery.
His studio is a showcase of his original skateboards. Among a jumble of rescued objects, including a tattooing bed, junk shop pictures, antiques and re-figured oil paintings, his boards include a tatami-mat skateboard, a boat skateboard, a board inspired by a koto Japanese harp that can be played while riding, and even a biker gang skateboard with a spectacular cowling. All the boards are skateable, which BABU demonstrates around the streets of Kokura, leaving passers-by stunned.
As for the paintings, “I scavenged many from art college rubbish tips during graduation season,” he says. “Or I bought them cheaply at highway junk shops, and then made my own additions, such as repainting the backgrounds.”
BABU showed his ‘visual remix’ paintings — made just like a DJ creates musical montages — at his solo exhibition, BABU Exhibition Love, in June 2017 at BEAMS Gallery, Shinjuku. This piece at MORA is from his show. I know of contemporary artists in the US who add cartoon characters and other elements to decorative art sold at shopping malls, but I feel BABU’s work is both sharper and more breezy than these. BABU’s life took a turn when he suffered a stroke in 2018. Still in his 30s, he almost lost the function of a third of his brain, but has recovered impressively.