UNKO OF UNKO: a poop relay where four teams rebuild the show weekly

'Unko' can stir laughter, disgust and childhood memories at once, and the show's premise is that freedom of expression lies in how seriously you commit to something silly — so no single vision should own the gallery.

One theme, four weeks, four teams: the whole show is rebuilt every week as designers, KAYAC volunteers, a street artist and an illustrator pass it on.

WOO took week one. Week two, KAYAC volunteers built a game-screen world in pink, yellow and light blue with a pixel-art poop, a Start button and hiragana keys spelling u-n-ko; week three, UNCORIN answered in two colors with a gekiga-style glaring close-up; week four, Ikura Inoue's all-orange 'Nchi, the world's cutest poop' anchors the final days. The pocket book 'UNKO B UNKO' (DOKU label) sold during the run, and the final evening brought a talk with Unko Museum creative director Akihito Abe and the owner of Ayase music pub Banban, closing with his song 'Unko Banban.'

The format itself makes the curatorial point — 'there's no single kind of poop': cute poops, philosophical poops, designed poops — since a completely different poop appears each week. No attendance figures are recorded in the material.

UNKO OF UNKO is a month-long group exhibition held at oasis, the gallery inside Ayacenter Guruguru, a community hub under the elevated tracks near Ayase Station in Adachi City, Tokyo. Four teams — design company WOO Inc., volunteer staff from KAYAC Inc., street artist UNCORIN and illustrator Ikura Inoue — each took about a week, passing the baton with the entire exhibition swapped out every time.

The weekly handovers produce deliberately opposite worlds. WOO opened the relay; KAYAC's volunteers answered with a video-game screen packed in pink, yellow and light blue — pixel-art poop character, Start button, hiragana keys lined up to spell u-n-ko; UNCORIN's week compressed everything into red and blue-green, a giant sculpted figure glaring at the viewer under a katakana logo in gritty gekiga-style lettering; the final week belongs to Ikura Inoue's Unchi no Nchi — all-orange, three-dimensional figures of 'the world's cutest poop,' one riding a duck-shaped float ring.

The show closed with a reservation-only talk and live night in PARK, the facility's event space: KAYAC creative director Akihito Abe, whose projects include the Unko Museum, joined the owner of Banban — a music pub that calls itself the cheapest in Japan and is credited as a special collaborator — with WOO's head moderating and the pub owner performing his original song 'Unko Banban.'

The relay format operationalizes the show's thesis — 'there's no single kind of poop' — by making each week a totally different author's answer to the same theme.

Committing fully to a silly subject is framed as the point: the exhibition treats seriousness of craft, not irony, as the route to expressive freedom.

Anchoring the show in Ayase — with a local music pub as collaborator and a free, first-come talk — ties the art to the neighborhood hub under the tracks rather than a museum circuit.

A relay beats a round-table: passing one silly theme between four teams, each rebuilding from scratch, produces four coherent worlds no committee could design.

The final week ran to its closing talk and live show; a pocket-size collection of works from the exhibition, 'UNKO B UNKO,' was published by the label DOKU during the run. The material records no attendance or touring plans.