Nine original Yokai print from Los Angeles based artist Lili Chin, currently exhibited for “Yokai Neighbors” Group Exhibition and available for purchase at AG Gallery.
All Prints from Lili Chin will soon be available at our gallery online store, and this blog post will be updated with link to each work very soon! Meanwhile, please enjoy learning about each Yokai and the artist.
All prints are available for purchase, (framed or unframed) please contact: natsumi@aboutglamour.net for purchase.
Installation view at AG Gallery from Yokai Neighbors
Installation view at AG Gallery from Yokai Neighbors
Installation view at AG Gallery from Yokai Neighbors
ABOUT 9 YOKAI From Lili Chin
Okka
Okka
Okka is a little red blobby yokai’s name, it is a babytalk version of obake. He’s a bit of a mystery because there are no stories about him, but he’s a regular participant in the Hyakki Yagyō, Night Parade of One Hundred Demons, in scrolls and other artwork.
Modern Yokai: Futakuchi Onna
Modern Yokai: Futakuchi Onna
Futakuchi Onna looks exactly like a normal woman – until she reveals the second mouth on the back of her head. It is always voraciously hungry, and Futakuchi Onna have left many a dining companion gaping too – at the size of the bill.
Tsukumogami
Tsukumogami
Tsukumo-gami is about very old objects that may acquire a spirit and come to life, becoming yokai called tsukumogami. The Hyakki Yagyō, Night Parade of One Hundred Demons, always includes many tsukumogami – tools, musical instruments, household goods, and kitchen implements, perhaps now even modern ones like this rice cooker.
Nurikabe
Nurikabe
Nurikabe is an invisible wall that appears late at night and blocks your way. It’s impossible to climb over or go around it. Normally this is troublesome, but manga author and yokai professor Shigeru Mizuki said that during World War II, a nurikabe stopped him from walking off a cliff in the jungle and saved his life. Some tales say that it will vanish if you wave or tap a stick near its base. (No word on what happens if you let your pug pee on it, but it’s worth a try.)
Modern Yokai: Kapp
Modern Yokai: Kapp
Kappa lives in rivers and have a appetite for cucumbers and an obsession with a magical ball that’s said to exist inside the human colon. Nowadays when development has made so many rivers uninhabitable, urban kappa may lurk at gyms and spas. If your companion in the hot tub has an odd, moist depression on the top of his head, beware – it may be a kappa!
Dodomeki
Dodomeki
Dodomeki are young women with long arms who had a habit of stealing money. They are punished by being transformed into a monster with hundreds of tiny bird’s eyes sprouting from its arms. It’s like a mark of their crime, because there was once a copper coin with a hole in the center that was nicknamed “bird’s eye.”
Modern Yokai: Tōfu-kozō
Modern Yokai: Tōfu-kozō
Modern Yokai: Tōfu-kozō
If you see a young fellow wandering the streets – or the supermarket aisles – with a plate of tofu, don’t take a sample! Tōfu-kozō may tell you it’s all natural, so it must be safe, right? Don’t be fooled – so are cobra venom, hemlock, and anthrax, and it’ll kill you just the same.
Modern Yokai: Nekomata
Modern Yokai: Nekomata
Modern Yokai: Nekomata
In the past, demon cats called Nekomata awoke the dead and reanimated corpses by jumping over their heads. These days they use rhythm, baby, rhythm!
ABOUT ARTIST
Lili Chin is a Los Angeles-based digital artist from Malaysia and Australia. Chin is best known as co-creator of the hit masked-wrestling inspired animated series “Mucha Lucha” for Warner Bros (2000’s), and for her globally-popular dog illustrations and animal behavior infographics. Chin’s author debut – an illustrated gift book on reading dog body language – will be published in October 2020. When she is not working on commissions for her clients, she enjoys drawing other creatures, hanging out with her senior Boston Terrier, and playing modern board games. As a Yokai Parade collaborator, Chin designs yokai for art prints and original pins.
