Kirigami
Milan rigger, performer and teacher who has performed since 2011, co-founded School of Rope Milano in 2016, was a certified Kinbaku Luxuria instructor from 2018 to 2022 and in 2025 was invited to tie for Sugiura Norio's Kinbaku Sajiki photo series.
Kirigami, also credited as Federico Kirigami, is an Italian rigger, performer and teacher based in Milan. His own site, Rope Tales, and the pages of the school he runs are the main published sources about him; the account below follows them.
Performance
By his own account he has worked as a performing rigger since 2011, starting in Italy, then elsewhere in Europe and eventually on other continents, in settings as different as arts festivals and underground club nights. He names the London event Bound and Shibari Day in Rome among the international rope events where he has appeared, and says he still enjoys the stage side of rope.
Training and influences
According to Rope Tales, he took his instructor examination with Riccardo Wildties and was a certified instructor with the Kinbaku Luxuria group from 2018 to 2022. He also studied the Japanese tea ceremony, in which he holds a teaching license, and cites other traditional Japanese arts and Zen thought as influences. He describes a growing interest in Japanese-style rope and in the depth of the exchange between rigger and model, and pictures his rope as a wordless dialogue in which eroticism and suffering are bound together.
School of Rope and Yūgen Studio
School of Rope Milano presents itself as a project of Kirigami and Tenshiko for teaching Japanese bondage. The school says the pair opened it in 2016 after several years of teaching and performing, and that its courses cover technique and safety together with the physical, aesthetic and psychological sides of rope, Japanese history and culture, and stretching for the person being tied. A masterclass listing published by Yūgen Studio, the event’s organizer, says they were invited to teach in Latin America and Australia in 2023 and describes their style as rooted in classical Japanese kinbaku. Rope Tales also mentions a limited-edition print publication, Yūgen Studio Magazine.
Work with Sugiura Norio
The same listing says the pair have worked with the photographer Sugiura Norio on workshops in Europe and Japan and on editorial projects. Rope Tales adds that, with the photographer Tommaso Cimarelli, Kirigami produced the first Western photographs published on Sugiura’s official website. According to the Yūgen listing, Sugiura invited him in 2025 to tie for Kinbaku Sajiki, the photographic series Sugiura curates, and both sources call him the first non-resident of Japan to receive that invitation. Neither says whether images from it have been published, and the claim comes from Kirigami’s own materials without independent confirmation.