“Although many of these pieces are recent, the concept of "kawaii guerrilla" is something I've been working on in my illustrations for a few years, inspired by my youthful fascination with urban guerrilla stories, in contrast to my more frivolous tastes such as Japanese pop culture, highlighting Lolita Fashion and its derivatives, as well as the tender graphics of that country and the aesthetics of singer Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, especially that scene from her video CANDY, CANDY, CANDY where she appears with a pink machine gun shooting at a giant onion.

The idea of making these mandalas of lolitas with weapons comes from a strange part of my past in which I was obsessed with eastern philosophies such as Buddhism and Taoism, I naively believed I found in them the truth about life, now in retrospect I do not feel identified with those ideas, perhaps Taoism still resonates a little inside me, but in general I think that the only thing that to date continues to completely captivate me about these religions or philosophies is their aesthetics, these mandalas full of details blow my mind, being a fanatic person of the compositions of the books of finding Wally, seeing these religious pieces full of details, symmetry, characters and symbology enriches me a lot visually.”

Zine by Pane Kusoge | @panelismo

Colours used: Fluo Pink, Fluo Orange, Orchid, Aqua, Green, Medium Blue