Alberto NoShibari
Barcelona rope teacher and performer active since the late 2000s who has run the collective Noshibari Art since 2017, presented at EURIX in Berlin in 2014, 2015 and 2026, and teaches an art-led approach built on technique, composition, psychology and ethics.
Alberto NoShibari is a shibari teacher and performer in Barcelona and the founder of NOSHIBARI, a project that his site describes as a collective for experimenting with and teaching contemporary shibari. He also works as a photographer and art director for rope in performance projects.
Training
His site says his rope began with the teaching of Japanese masters and that he has taken occasional classes with Yukimura Haruki, Naka Akira, Hajime Kinoko, Kazami Ranki, Osada Steve, Otonawa, Esinem, Nicolas Yoroï (now A-Nicolas) and Matthias T. J. Grimme. It does not give years for these classes.
Projects in Spain
His site lists community projects from 2008 onward, starting with rope gatherings called Encuentros de Cuerdas at El Garage in Madrid. He co-organized Cuerdas por Japón, a project that sent aid after the 2011 tsunami in Japan. He led monthly workshops for more than a year under the names Nido de Cuerdas in Barcelona and Atar y ser atado in Madrid. For 2013 the site lists a shibari student group in Barcelona and work on Tatooatados, a book by the photographer Tentesion with more than 200 models. From 2018 to 2019 he held a weekly event and workshops called Art & Shibari at Mutuo Centro. A 2018 listing for the Barcelona shop amantis Gràcia billed him, as part of Shibari Lab, for a workshop for couples with some rope experience that covered simple and advanced ties, the sensations of pressure and immobility, and safety. Since 2021 he has handled shibari and performance art direction for “Lucía”, a project of the company Cia. La Dama.
Festivals and performances
According to his site, his work has been seen in Moscow, London, Berlin, Madrid, Granada, Málaga and Barcelona. He was invited to the London Festival of the Art of Japanese Bondage in 2009 and to the 2019 edition of Moscow Knot. In November 2014 he took part in the Triangular de Shibari at Sala Clamores in Madrid, an event the site ties to Naka Akira’s first visit to Spain. He presented at EURIX, the Berlin rope festival founded under Felix Ruckert, at its fifth edition in autumn 2014 and its seventh in autumn 2015, both at Schwelle7. For the autumn 2026 edition at Holzmarkt he was invited back for a third time, with a master class developed with Alexandra Segura in which both partners act as active co-creators rather than as rigger and passive model.
Teaching and approach
Noshibari Art works in three areas, which it calls creation, teaching and mestizaje: developing its own view of shibari for a contemporary Western context, sharing techniques openly, and combining rope with artistic, sensory and therapeutic disciplines. He offers private sessions and micro-workshops for individuals, couples and small groups in the Sants area of Barcelona, covering safety and basic anatomy, rope technique, non-verbal communication and consent, and the composition of a scene. The Noshibari Lab adds small-group sessions in the studio and online on partner presence, ethics and care, and dramaturgy and visual composition. The collective’s site is in Spanish.
In his own statement, he presents rope as an artistic, psychological and bodily exploration centered on intensity, mutual attunement and ethics, and proposes a teaching model that does not follow traditional lines, built on technique, composition, psychology and ethics. He names Freud’s and Lacan’s ideas on the death drive and the sparse Baroque religious sculpture of the Valladolid school among his references.