TRUE COLOR FESTIVAL – WEAR YOUR TRUE COLORS

TRUE COLOR FESTIVAL - Super Diversity Arts Festival - was part of a project developed by The Nippon Foundation toward the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games, with the aim of creating a society in which differences such as disability, sexuality, generation, language, and nationality can coexist and support one another. As a related initiative, the WEAR YOUR True Colors project translated messages from creators and artists who embody diversity into T-shirts.

For the first edition, WEAR YOUR True Colors INVITED ARTISTS BY KLEINSTEIN, KLEINSTEIN served as selector and invited three artists and artist groups: APL.DE.AP, TOM OF FINLAND, and JOHN DOVE AND MOLLY WHITE. Rather than treating the T-shirt as a simple product, the project approached it as a medium close to the body and as a canvas for carrying messages, editing each artist's cultural background and attitude toward freedom into the form of the project.

JOHN DOVE AND MOLLY WHITE, pioneers of a culture that gave the T-shirt a strong communicative force, presented the question "ME? YOU & US!" The design celebrates the relationship between self, other, and us as a site of cultural exchange and communication.

TOM OF FINLAND, a pioneer of gay art and one of Finland's most iconic artists, created images that affirm desire, the body, and pride. For this project, the sense of freedom and dignity carried by his work was connected to the everyday format of the T-shirt.

APL.DE.AP, a member of the Black Eyed Peas, has communicated cultural identity and social messages through music and through his own roots. KLEINSTEIN connected the border-crossing quality of his practice to the theme of True Colors, adding another voice to the project's polyphonic structure.

Special thanks to Patrick Cunningham for the APL.DE.AP project and to Joakim Andreasson of the Tom of Finland Foundation.