RiRia
- Actor
- Visual Effects
- Music Department
Born in Tokyo and based in Los Angeles, RiRia is an actor and multidisciplinary artist whose practice moves across performance, film, music, fashion, visual culture, technology, and physical space.
RiRia began playing the flute at six and emerged unusually early within Japan’s classical music world, earning a series of top prizes and youngest-ever distinctions at national and international competitions. While still in elementary school, she appeared on TV Asahi’s long-running classical music program Daimei no Nai Ongakukai ("Untitled Concert"), performing with an orchestra and beginning her professional career as a classical flutist.
At 14, RiRia recorded a flute version of Khachaturian’s "Masquerade Waltz" connected to figure skater Mao Asada’s program for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
While building a career in classical music, RiRia had already begun imagining a life far beyond the concert stage. Experiences ranging from seeing opera as a child to discovering artists such as Michael Jackson shaped an ambition to become an entertainer who could move freely between music, movement, acting, and visual expression.
In 2011, RiRia won the 2nd Maxence Larrieu International Flute Competition in Nice, France, becoming its youngest winner. The following year, at 17, she moved alone from Tokyo to Los Angeles.
While continuing her music studies in the United States, RiRia gradually shifted her focus from classical performance toward film and visual culture. After beginning to appear in smaller music and video projects, she launched her professional acting career in Los Angeles in 2017.
Her screen work has since included HBO’s Hacks, Hulu’s Dollface, and a cameo appearance in the feature film Bullet Train. She also provided the English voice of protagonist Satoru Fujinuma in Netflix’s live-action adaptation of Erased and has appeared in music videos for artists including the Jonas Brothers, Travis Scott, and Chris Brown.
Her commercial and modeling work has included campaigns for Nike, adidas, United Airlines, Nissan, HP, McDonald’s, ULTA Beauty, Facebook, REI, Oculus, Robinhood, FUJIFILM, Walmart, Chase Sapphire, and numerous other global brands. In 2024, she appeared in Verizon’s Super Bowl campaign featuring Beyoncé and has also worked as a model on a beauty project connected to Beyoncé’s haircare brand.
At the same time, RiRia’s distinctive visual identity and the work she was publishing independently online began pushing her career behind the camera.
After her Instagram caught the attention of former 2NE1 member CL, RiRia created visuals for CL’s "+DONE161201+" music video while also making a cameo appearance in the project. The collaboration became a turning point, expanding RiRia’s practice into directing, photography, creative production, visual storytelling, and design.
Since then, she has worked as a creator with brands and collaborators spanning fashion, entertainment, technology, and culture, including Cathay Pacific, Toyota, CASIO, Gentle Monster, GQ Japan, VOGUE JAPAN, TUMI, UGG, Maison Margiela, Paramount, CASETiFY, JINS, Sanrio, XBOX, and 88rising. Her work has ranged from photography for a global CASIO campaign to creating a web commercial for Cathay Pacific, increasingly positioning RiRia not only as a subject within an image, but as one of the people responsible for constructing the image itself.
In 2023, RiRia was invited to Hong Kong for the global launch of ONE by Penfolds, a collaboration between Australian wine house Penfolds and Japanese designer NIGO, and participated in Hypebeast coverage surrounding the project.
That same year, she appeared at SIGGRAPH, one of the world’s leading conferences for computer graphics and interactive technologies, as part of its creator programming exploring emerging relationships between technology and creative culture.
Music also re-entered RiRia’s work in an entirely different form.
She contributed lyrics and production to "TPIR," a collaboration between K-pop artist KANGDANIEL and Japanese guitarist and artist MIYAVI, and later designed merchandise for MIYAVI’s U.S. tour. She also produced music for GQ Japan’s official Men of the Year TikTok challenge.
RiRia has expanded into percussion as well. As a drummer, she appeared in Idina Menzel’s "Dream Girl" music video connected to Amazon’s Cinderella and later performed live with Menzel on the America’s Got Talent stage.
Although she now performs classical flute selectively, the instrument and the physical discipline behind it remain part of her artistic vocabulary. Tiger Beer featured RiRia internationally through her signature "Dancing Flute" performance, combining flute and movement in a global campaign that appeared across television and outdoor advertising throughout Southeast Asia.
In 2024, RiRia took on one of her most complete authorship roles to date through TOYOTA DIRECTORSCUT, a film project inspired by Japan’s SUPER FORMULA racing series. Working across concept, production, direction, editing, and performance, she approached the project not simply as on-camera talent but as the author of the complete piece.
The project, along with her trajectory from classical musician to actor and multidisciplinary artist, became the subject of a solo feature in VOGUE JAPAN.
In 2026, RiRia began developing MA, an intentional digital museum conceived as an alternative way of documenting a life online.
Rather than presenting identity through the polished chronology of a conventional social feed, MA transforms thoughts, objects, memories, emotions, discoveries, failures, and creative processes into exhibitions. The project also extends into a visual podcast built around conversations between "Real RiRia" and a digital counterpart, using technology not as a replacement for the self, but as a way of questioning, editing, documenting, and expanding it.
That idea has a physical counterpart.
RiRia’s Los Angeles home and creative headquarters, nicknamed Miracle Park, functions as an evolving "obscure museum." Her collection of Japanese designer fashion and culturally significant objects exists alongside self-built furniture, DIY experiments, installations, music, food, and the traces of everyday life. Visitors periodically enter the space, allowing conversations and shared experiences to become another layer of the work.
Rather than separating art from the environment in which it is made, RiRia treats the entire home as an evolving installation.
In September 2026, this practice was featured in the Los Angeles Times’ IMAGE magazine. The feature explored RiRia not simply as a collector of Japanese fashion and design, but as an artist who allows those objects to expand beyond the collection itself, reshaping an entire living environment around them and turning the home into an extension of her creative practice.
For RiRia, collecting is not simply an act of ownership. It is another form of authorship: taking objects made in different eras, places, and creative contexts and placing them into new relationships with one another. Clothing, furniture, music, digital work, conversation, and even whatever happens inside the space can become material within the same evolving world.
Across classical music, acting, filmmaking, fashion, photography, music production, technology, objects, and physical space, RiRia’s practice is not driven by the accumulation of disciplines.
It is driven by the translation of a single point of view through different mediums.
The instrument changes. The authorship remains.
Made in Tokyo, Product of LA.
RiRia began playing the flute at six and emerged unusually early within Japan’s classical music world, earning a series of top prizes and youngest-ever distinctions at national and international competitions. While still in elementary school, she appeared on TV Asahi’s long-running classical music program Daimei no Nai Ongakukai ("Untitled Concert"), performing with an orchestra and beginning her professional career as a classical flutist.
At 14, RiRia recorded a flute version of Khachaturian’s "Masquerade Waltz" connected to figure skater Mao Asada’s program for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
While building a career in classical music, RiRia had already begun imagining a life far beyond the concert stage. Experiences ranging from seeing opera as a child to discovering artists such as Michael Jackson shaped an ambition to become an entertainer who could move freely between music, movement, acting, and visual expression.
In 2011, RiRia won the 2nd Maxence Larrieu International Flute Competition in Nice, France, becoming its youngest winner. The following year, at 17, she moved alone from Tokyo to Los Angeles.
While continuing her music studies in the United States, RiRia gradually shifted her focus from classical performance toward film and visual culture. After beginning to appear in smaller music and video projects, she launched her professional acting career in Los Angeles in 2017.
Her screen work has since included HBO’s Hacks, Hulu’s Dollface, and a cameo appearance in the feature film Bullet Train. She also provided the English voice of protagonist Satoru Fujinuma in Netflix’s live-action adaptation of Erased and has appeared in music videos for artists including the Jonas Brothers, Travis Scott, and Chris Brown.
Her commercial and modeling work has included campaigns for Nike, adidas, United Airlines, Nissan, HP, McDonald’s, ULTA Beauty, Facebook, REI, Oculus, Robinhood, FUJIFILM, Walmart, Chase Sapphire, and numerous other global brands. In 2024, she appeared in Verizon’s Super Bowl campaign featuring Beyoncé and has also worked as a model on a beauty project connected to Beyoncé’s haircare brand.
At the same time, RiRia’s distinctive visual identity and the work she was publishing independently online began pushing her career behind the camera.
After her Instagram caught the attention of former 2NE1 member CL, RiRia created visuals for CL’s "+DONE161201+" music video while also making a cameo appearance in the project. The collaboration became a turning point, expanding RiRia’s practice into directing, photography, creative production, visual storytelling, and design.
Since then, she has worked as a creator with brands and collaborators spanning fashion, entertainment, technology, and culture, including Cathay Pacific, Toyota, CASIO, Gentle Monster, GQ Japan, VOGUE JAPAN, TUMI, UGG, Maison Margiela, Paramount, CASETiFY, JINS, Sanrio, XBOX, and 88rising. Her work has ranged from photography for a global CASIO campaign to creating a web commercial for Cathay Pacific, increasingly positioning RiRia not only as a subject within an image, but as one of the people responsible for constructing the image itself.
In 2023, RiRia was invited to Hong Kong for the global launch of ONE by Penfolds, a collaboration between Australian wine house Penfolds and Japanese designer NIGO, and participated in Hypebeast coverage surrounding the project.
That same year, she appeared at SIGGRAPH, one of the world’s leading conferences for computer graphics and interactive technologies, as part of its creator programming exploring emerging relationships between technology and creative culture.
Music also re-entered RiRia’s work in an entirely different form.
She contributed lyrics and production to "TPIR," a collaboration between K-pop artist KANGDANIEL and Japanese guitarist and artist MIYAVI, and later designed merchandise for MIYAVI’s U.S. tour. She also produced music for GQ Japan’s official Men of the Year TikTok challenge.
RiRia has expanded into percussion as well. As a drummer, she appeared in Idina Menzel’s "Dream Girl" music video connected to Amazon’s Cinderella and later performed live with Menzel on the America’s Got Talent stage.
Although she now performs classical flute selectively, the instrument and the physical discipline behind it remain part of her artistic vocabulary. Tiger Beer featured RiRia internationally through her signature "Dancing Flute" performance, combining flute and movement in a global campaign that appeared across television and outdoor advertising throughout Southeast Asia.
In 2024, RiRia took on one of her most complete authorship roles to date through TOYOTA DIRECTORSCUT, a film project inspired by Japan’s SUPER FORMULA racing series. Working across concept, production, direction, editing, and performance, she approached the project not simply as on-camera talent but as the author of the complete piece.
The project, along with her trajectory from classical musician to actor and multidisciplinary artist, became the subject of a solo feature in VOGUE JAPAN.
In 2026, RiRia began developing MA, an intentional digital museum conceived as an alternative way of documenting a life online.
Rather than presenting identity through the polished chronology of a conventional social feed, MA transforms thoughts, objects, memories, emotions, discoveries, failures, and creative processes into exhibitions. The project also extends into a visual podcast built around conversations between "Real RiRia" and a digital counterpart, using technology not as a replacement for the self, but as a way of questioning, editing, documenting, and expanding it.
That idea has a physical counterpart.
RiRia’s Los Angeles home and creative headquarters, nicknamed Miracle Park, functions as an evolving "obscure museum." Her collection of Japanese designer fashion and culturally significant objects exists alongside self-built furniture, DIY experiments, installations, music, food, and the traces of everyday life. Visitors periodically enter the space, allowing conversations and shared experiences to become another layer of the work.
Rather than separating art from the environment in which it is made, RiRia treats the entire home as an evolving installation.
In September 2026, this practice was featured in the Los Angeles Times’ IMAGE magazine. The feature explored RiRia not simply as a collector of Japanese fashion and design, but as an artist who allows those objects to expand beyond the collection itself, reshaping an entire living environment around them and turning the home into an extension of her creative practice.
For RiRia, collecting is not simply an act of ownership. It is another form of authorship: taking objects made in different eras, places, and creative contexts and placing them into new relationships with one another. Clothing, furniture, music, digital work, conversation, and even whatever happens inside the space can become material within the same evolving world.
Across classical music, acting, filmmaking, fashion, photography, music production, technology, objects, and physical space, RiRia’s practice is not driven by the accumulation of disciplines.
It is driven by the translation of a single point of view through different mediums.
The instrument changes. The authorship remains.
Made in Tokyo, Product of LA.
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