One Heart Project
A participatory mosaic art project. Send one portrait photograph and it becomes one piece of an artwork built from thousands of others. Your face stays in the place it is given, and every artwork is finished on a fixed date with the places taken by then.
Why these 22 characters exist
Between 2024 and 2025 I met children living with illness. The characters came out of their ideas, and I drew them. Twenty-two became the foundation of ONE HEART.
You don’t have to work so hard for me. Said by a child who already understood what the people around him were carrying. Most of them are treated with money their parents earned, and with support from public systems. They know it, and they carry it.
So I started from the other side. If what came from them carried its own value — as artwork, then as products — the value could come back to them. They would no longer only be the ones receiving.
If the characters become products, the goal is for the value to return to the children whose ideas they came from. And if it works, it should not stop at twenty-two.
The project in fifty seconds
One portrait becomes one piece. Twenty-three artworks, built by the people inside them.
The song
Written and produced for this project by Tiger.J.Bob.
I don't know your name
You don't know mine
Different worlds
Different lives
Still we stand
Under the same sky
Beyond every border
Beyond every fear
We are here
We are alive
名前すら知らない。
あなたも僕を知らない。
生きてきた世界も、
人生も違う。
それでも僕たちは、
同じ空の下に立っている。
すべての国境を越えて。
すべての恐れを越えて。
僕たちはここにいる。
僕たちは、生きている。
How one artwork is made
Choose an artwork. Back it with ¥500. Send one portrait photograph. Your photo is placed as a single piece and stays in that position. Every artwork is produced and delivered to everyone inside it, whether or not all of its places have been taken.
Nothing is generated to fill a gap. Every piece is a real person.
The completion rule
Every artwork holds 2,500 places, and every place has a fixed position from the first day. A place that has been taken carries a portrait. A place still open carries the colour the artwork needs there, which is why the picture reads from the first hundred people onwards.
On 30 June 2027 the places close and each artwork is rendered as it stands. Whatever has been taken by then becomes the finished edition, and it is delivered to everyone inside it by 30 September 2027. No artwork is cancelled for being short of people, and no place is ever filled by a face that is not a real person.
The collection
Read in order, the twenty-three artworks trace one life: being born, becoming yourself, meeting others, and connecting. Twenty-two carry a face each. The twenty-third is where they come together, and it is built from 5,000 portraits instead of 2,500.
The hidden second side
Every piece has a reverse. The front carries your face; the back carries your name or initials. The reverse sides of all twenty-three artworks are built from names — and when they are turned over and brought together, they form another image entirely.
That image is the reason this project is called ONE HEART.
What you receive
You receive one certificate for every piece you hold. It shows the artwork number and title, your piece number and its exact position, the date of completion, and a certificate ID with QR verification.
Every certificate you hold is linked to a single member ID — one per person. It is how ONE HEART recognises you as the project continues. Everything is delivered digitally; nothing is shipped.
How to join
One place in each of the 22 artworks, and two places in ONE HEART. Twenty-four in total. Participation opens on Kickstarter, and continues here once the campaign ends — tell me when it opens.