Takashi Murakami x Virgil Abloh: Memento Mori (2018, Screenprint) brings together Murakami’s vibrant, anime-inspired iconography with Abloh’s minimalist, industrial design language, resulting in a collaborative work that collapses art, fashion, and philosophy into a single visual statement.

The composition centers on Abloh’s Off-White arrows logo—rendered here in outline—laid over Murakami’s dense field of cartoon skulls, repeated in rhythmic patterns across a vivid orange background. The skulls, a recurring motif in Murakami’s practice, fuse pop culture aesthetics with the traditional vanitas theme of mortality, while the industrial clarity of Abloh’s arrows adds a stark counterpoint, functioning as both brand identity and geometric structure.

The title Memento Mori—Latin for “remember you must die”—anchors the work in the centuries-old artistic tradition of confronting viewers with their mortality. Yet in the hands of Murakami and Abloh, this reminder of death is reframed within contemporary consumer culture, where branding, repetition, and logos define both identity and legacy. The playful cartoon skulls soften the subject, while the crisp design of the arrows turns it into a system of navigation, as if pointing to the inevitability of time itself.

In Memento Mori, two worlds meet: Murakami’s dense, colorful universe of kawaii-pop symbolism and Abloh’s stripped-down, utilitarian semiotics. The result is both celebratory and sobering—a work that situates mortality within the flow of modern culture, reminding us of life’s impermanence while also affirming art’s ability to leave a lasting mark.