On 13 March, Japanese-born artist and composer RIEKO releases a new single ‘Fruit’ via live art platform Diasporas Now.

The art film serving as the music video for ‘Fruit’ premiered in London at the Institute of Contemporary Arts on 7 March alongside a live performance of her sophomore EP which will follow later this year. The event was the finale of Diasporas Now’s collective residency, featuring a multidisciplinary lineup of artists from their year-long programme – including JulianKnxx, Black Obsidian Sound System, and BULLYACHE.

‘Fruit’ is at once a lament and a hymnal of devotion – mothering gardens as future ancestors, amid depleted soils for progeny to come. In terrains of ravenous, systemic extraction, the song asks what it means to nurture hope for harvest in lifetimes beyond our own.

Layered over guttural bass, ghostly strings, and sparse piano are quivering invocations like I’m dreaming of nothing and I’m letting go, and in silence, in violence, you won’t be alone – lines that caress, unflinchingly, the hard edges of humanity’s cachexic desires.

Yet despite everything, ‘Fruit’ beckons with quiet knowing: You need me, the song concludes, evoking a deeply relational understanding that love – across time, self, other, and collective – illuminates simultaneously our shadows, and our most powerful paths to salvation.

The art film for “Fruit” is directed by Jesse May Fisher (represented by Agile Films), co-creative directed by RIEKO, and choreographed by Lewis Walker. The film has been selected for the BAFTA-qualifying Aesthetica Short Film Festival.

The work was inspired by the Buddhist tale of Kishibojin, a child-devouring demon who undergoes a spiritual transformation to protect the vulnerable, consuming instead pomegranate seeds as the closest replacement to flesh.