Art Collective Mé Carves Holes Into Home, Revealing Cavernous Interior

japanese art, design and culture

Along a narrow residential street in Kanawa, the historic heart of Beppu City known for their geothermal hot springs, is an inconspicuous 2-story home that, until recently, would have been barely noticeable. With gaping holes carved into it, the home was recently revealed as art collective Mé’s newest installation.

Art collective 目[mé], founded in Tokyo in 2013, is known for their surreal and whimsical installations that question the way we perceive the world around us, unsettling assumptions, expectations, and pre-conceptions. They’ve previously floated a hot air balloon of a giant head over Tokyo and created a wave-like sculpture inside a room of a museum.

Their latest installation, revealed in December 2025, is a home with two gigantic holes carved into the sides as if an ogre was crafting with an exacto knife. Peering into the holes, one immediately notices that, instead of walls and furniture, the interior has been transformed into a cavernous underworld. Titled “space II” the installation is the 2nd in a series altering everyday homes in Japan. The first was in 2020 when the collective inserted a white cubic gallery space into the 2nd floor