Bowie The Manga Series

Bowie: The Manga Series reimagines David Bowie through the expressive visual language of Japanese manga—transforming one of music’s greatest cultural icons into a sequence of bold, cinematic characters.

Created collaboratively by British artist and designer Hiren Kothari and Russian jewellery designer Maria Sokolyanskaya, the series grew from a creative friendship that began when they met in London many years ago. Since then, they have collaborated across art and design, combining Hiren’s experience in music, fashion and visual culture with Maria’s eye for detail, form and ornamentation.

The collection draws upon the history of Japanese graphic storytelling. Katsushika Hokusai helped popularise the term manga through his celebrated nineteenth-century sketchbooks, while Osamu Tezuka—creator of Astro Boy—later transformed the medium and became known as the father of modern manga.

Bowie was a natural subject for this visual fusion. His career continually crossed the boundaries between music, theatre, art and fashion, while his collaborations with Japanese designer Kansai Yamamoto helped create some of the most memorable stage costumes of the 1970s.

A central inspiration is Bowie’s distressed Union Jack frock coat, created with Alexander McQueen for the cover of Earthling in 1997. Against a pastoral British landscape, the torn and weathered flag became a striking symbol of identity, tradition and reinvention—perfectly reflecting Bowie’s ability to dismantle familiar imagery and rebuild it into something new.

Each artwork translates a different Bowie identity into the dramatic lines, heightened emotion and graphic energy of manga while retaining the elegance and visual experimentation that defined his extraordinary career.