Weaving Multiple Layers of Expression — Director, Engineer, and Artist

Media artist Rio Nakada occupies an extraordinary range of creative roles within Nox, the XR project selected for the 55th International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR).

She is the director and screenwriter who shaped the narrative foundation of the work, while simultaneously serving as its lead engineer and artist. From world-building and animation to sound design and interaction systems that allow participants to engage with the space, every aspect of the project was carefully crafted through her own vision and technical expertise.

Nakada also places herself at the center of the work as both narrator and performer, presenting a deeply personal universe to the world without compromise. The result is a rare demonstration of individual authorship—an artist assuming responsibility for nearly every layer of creation.

Yet while constructing intricate digital worlds through logic and technology, she has devoted countless solitary hours to another practice: drawing.

Forty Sketchbooks of Self-Portraits — Lines of Survival That Must Be Drawn

For Rio Nakada, sitting before a blank page with a pen in hand is less an act of artistic production than a form of breathing—a deeply personal and urgent dialogue with herself.

"I never decide what I'm going to draw. The pen simply moves on its own as I draw."

Those words reveal a process free from calculation or intention: a pure release of inner impulses.

More than forty sketchbooks are stacked in her home, filled with self-portraits drawn over the years. Within them reside the enduring pain of Complex PTSD, which has accompanied her since childhood, and the confines of a society that seeks to force individuals into predetermined molds.

While she builds logical systems as an engineer, drawing serves as a means of releasing emotions that accumulate within her. It is a record of detoxification, a way of maintaining psychological balance. To draw is not a choice but a necessity. These countless pages form a record of survival itself—the trace of the path she has walked to arrive here.

Automatism — The Pen That Moves Beyond Thought

Developed entirely outside the framework of formal art education, Nakada's line possesses a remarkable combination of freedom and precision.

Created without preliminary sketches or hesitation, her continuous one-stroke drawings carry a vitality that seems to reach directly into the viewer's nervous system. They evoke the spirit of automatism pursued by the Surrealists, yet arrived at independently—not through theory, but through instinct.

What emerged was not an artistic method but a means of survival.

The absence of artifice in her mark-making immediately communicates something rare: an expression free from falsehood.

Armoring a Sanctuary — Nox Released into the Wilderness of the World

A Nora is not lacking in cooperation. A Nora simply refuses to bend.
— from Nora, edited by Kaoru Ijima

For Rio Nakada, art is not merely self-expression.
It is a quiet form of armor—a way of protecting the sanctuary of the self and securing a freedom that cannot be taken away.
"I don't care about how others see me. I simply want undeniable proof that allows me to believe in myself."
That determination transcended the realm of private drawing and culminated in Nox, an XR project for which she undertook every stage of production herself.
Centered on the deeply personal subject of her own Complex PTSD, and placing herself at the heart of the work as narrator and performer, Nox functions as both an artwork and a documentary of personal truth.
Its selection for the International Film Festival Rotterdam marked a significant moment: the instant when the urgent lines drawn by a solitary Nora, and the documentary born from confronting her own pain, resonated with the wider world.

"Even if I were born again, I would still be a Nora."

"I do not seek conflict. I simply refuse to bend myself.

Perhaps I have many enemies. Yet I also have allies whose support is equally certain."

— from Nora, edited by Kaoru Ijima

Having chosen to live as a Nora, Rio Nakada's pen shows no sign of stopping.

In pursuit of a freedom that cannot be violated by anyone, she continues to inscribe her own truths onto new pages, one after another.

Text by Yayoi