Noki

Noki gathers more than a decade of photographic collaboration between Axel Hoedt and JJ Hudson, the London-based designer and performance artist who works under the name Noki. The project is built almost entirely around the improvised masks Hudson wears in place of a face.

Hudson constructs each mask from textile collage and salvaged garment fragments, working against the uniformity of mass-produced fashion and corporate branding. Hoedt photographs the results as portraits, treating the masks as studies in otherness, refusal, belonging and isolation rather than as costume. Art Paper Editions published the 52-page softcover in 2018 in an edition of 1,000 copies.

Hoedt was born in Freiburg in 1966 and has been based in London since 1999. His portraiture and documentary work returns often to disguise, ritual and performed identity, including his earlier book on the masked carnival traditions of the Alps, Once a Year (Dewi Lewis, 2011). Noki extends that interest in the mask as a social and psychological device from folk custom into the language of contemporary fashion and subculture.