Mago Nagasaka
our friendship

Mago was born in 1984. He started an apparel company, but it went bankrupt after one year. Having a huge debt, he began creating paintings along the streets of Shinjuku in 2009. After that, he created paintings and continued to sell them to galleries. In 2015, he held his first solo exhibition in Shanghai, China. In June 2017, he visited Agbogbloshie, a slum in Ghana, and encountered people who made their living by burning electrical machinery that advanced countries, including Japan, had thrown away. Using funds raised from the sales of his works, he has delivered more than 1,000 gas masks to Ghana up to now. In 2018, he established “MAGO ART AND STUDY”, the slum’s first school. In August 2019, when he visited Agbogbloshie for the fifth time, he stayed there for 53 days and established “MAGO E-Waste Museum”, the slum’s first cultural facility. He did that for the sake of the inhabitants’ new hopes and lives. Emmy Award-winning director Kern Konwiser pursued the path taken by Mago and produced the documentary film “Still A Black Star”. The film won awards of excellence in four categories of the Impact Docs Award, a documentary film award in the United States. Preparations are underway for the film’s release.