Hervé Lewis

Introduction

The image is configured as a profound anthropological, psychological, and aesthetic investigation. The subject of the work is unequivocally recognizable as Fiamalu Penitani, universally known by his Japanese fighting name Musashimaru Kōyō, the sixty-seventh Yokozuna (the highest rank in sumo wrestling) in the history of Japan. However, Lewis does not merely portray the athlete in his institutional Japanese capacity but carries out an operation of identity rewriting, or rather, an unearthing of roots.