Masako Miki grew up in Osaka, listening to folklore.

Most temples and shrines had a scroll of the Hyakki Yagyō (The Night Parade of One Hundred Demons), a myth going back to the 8th century in which beings called yōkai were rioting and the people hid inside in fear. As a kid, Miki was fascinated by the story, which was not only tied to religion but showed up in popular culture such as comics and animation, too.

For years, the artist has been creating her own version of yōkai: colorful felted figures. Now, for Midnight March at the Institute for Contemporary Art San Francisco, she is bringing dozens of them together—along with paintings of the night sky—to recreate the story.

Masako Miki's 'Enchanted Pine Tree Reaching Clouds', 2024(Phillip Maisel)

The goal of the show, which opens tomorrow and is on view through December 7th, is for visitors to feel engaged in the parade, which Miki has reimagined as a type of protest and a call for recognition—something she began to think more about while on a residency in rural Japan about ten years ago.

“I saw how people live there, and folklore and mythologies are such a big part of their life,” Miki explains. “There's the mountains and people believe the actual deities live there. I was studying how in places in Japan where we say, ‘Okay, this is the temple where this deity actually jumped off the cliff.’ You don’t hear that a lot when you live in a city. You maybe read about it, or it comes in a YouTube feed or something. I knew about ghosts and shapeshifters, but I wanted to study why is it so relevant still? This story has lingered for centuries.”

Miki started reading ethnologies and about how communities—from their clothes to their cooking tools—are affected by their ecosystems. The stories we tell make us who we are, she says, and lead to the kinds of social systems we create.

For the show at the ICA, Miki has made her own version of the story, depicting the yōkai as complex, not grotesque and scary. The playful nature of her work is intentional, she says, so people will want to engage with it.

Artist Masako Miki's 'Midnight March" opens at ICA SF on May 16.(Francis Baker)

“She’s doing it totally in her own style and her own voice,” says Meghan Smith, Lyra Foundation curator and communications manager at ICA SF. “Masako is just so incredible. What we were interested in is how the core of that folk tale is about this protest for recognition and respect.”

The first time Ali Gass, the director and chief curator of ICA, visited Miki’s studio, she immediately grasped what she wanted to do and suggested a site-specific piece downstairs in the circular atrium. To immerse visitors in the experience, they made all the walls a dark navy blue and worked with Miki to make 70-foot-long murals that create a kind of “galaxy void” with dots and stars that she has done in some of her other paintings.

“They create a kind of depth,” Smith says. “What we wanted was to somehow capture the experience of you as a visitor stepping into one of her paintings. The scale of Masako’s sculptures is so amazing and large, so you start to become immersed, and it’s almost like the visitor becomes as much a character as the sculptures. So when you descend on the steps, you become part of the Midnight March.”

Miki hopes this immersive experience will lead visitors to see that difference doesn’t have to be scary, and that the discarded and forgotten characters in the myth want recognition.

Masako Miki's Sentient Roly-Poly, 2021(Steve Ferrera)

“I want my installation to spread this story, filled with empathy and resiliency. We are complex beings, and we're not always good. But we strive to be good and that's very hopeful,” she says. “I think the best quality of humans is we can update our myths. As an artist, that's what I want to do. I want to update our old myths, so the new stories can flourish.”