NAGASAKA MAGO ALL SELECTION: Collection of works by Shingo Nagasaka

In recent years, art made from waste materials has been gaining attention. Moreover, these works are being bought and sold at high prices due to the popularity of NFTs and the trend towards SDGs. Among them, the artist who is currently attracting the most attention is Shingo Nagasaka, who continues to create works using electronic waste dumped in Ghana by developed countries. Nagasaka, whose company went bankrupt in 2009 and became a street painter, visited Agbogbloshie, a slum in Ghana known as the world's electronic device graveyard, alone in 2017. There, he met people who were desperately trying to survive by burning large amounts of electronic waste for a daily wage of just 500 yen. What he witnessed was the sight of young people inhaling large amounts of gas, developing cancer, and losing their lives. "Is it really so important to build wealth even at the expense of their lives? I want to convey this truth through the power of art," Nagasaka vowed, and after returning to Japan, he used the electronic waste to create art with the motif of people living in the slums. He invests most of his sales in purchasing gas masks for them, running schools, and running recycling factories. Nagasaka's activities, which advocate "sustainable capitalism" and use the proceeds from his art to bring education, culture, and economic growth back to slums, have been compiled in a book that includes many of his works and his own words filled with his thoughts.