Japanese artist Hikaru Cho is already well-known for her bizarre and realistic body paintings, but now the Tokyo-based artist has applied her talent to everyday food items as well. In her playful “It’s Not What It Seems” series, she turns common foods into other kinds of food using only acrylic paint and her extraordinary talent.

Her website calls theses ‘hair hats’ which are styled into the form of various kind of animals such as a lion, rabbit, elephant, rhino and many others using hand crafted hair weaves that are made using a mold or mesh of wire.

Hikaru Cho believes that we should challenge our imaginations to create new work using traditional tools, not fancy computers and software. (Photo by Jim Marks/PA Wire)

宇多田ヒカル (Utada Hikaru) –One Last Kiss. Utada Hikaru is a Japanese-American singer-songwriter and producer. By the end of the 2000s, Utada was deemed “the most influential artist of the decade” in the Japanese music landscape by The Japan Times. Utada's commercial success has made her one of Japan's top-selling recording artists of all time.

Balinese man dances in the middle of burn coconut husks during the fire fight ritual called Mesabatan Api on March 21, 2023 at traditional sub village of Nagi, in Gianyar, Bali, Indonesia. The mesabatan api ritual is held annually on the eve of Nyepi, the Hindu Day of Silence, the Balinese Caka New Year, and only takes place in Pakraman Nagi village in Gianyar regency, around 30 kilometers from Denpasar. (Photo by Agung Parameswara/Getty Images)

Tourists wear protective masks in Sanur, Bali, Indonesia, 15 March 2020. Indonesia has around 80 active cases of Covid-19. More than 70,000 people worldwide have recovered from coronavirus, nearly half of the total infections recorded since the outbreak began. (Photo by Made Nagi/EPA/EFE)

A man carrying buckets walks along a beach littered with piles of debris and plastic waste at the Kedonganan beach in Bali, Indonesia, 19 March 2024. Most of the trash ends up in the sea every rainy season due to the island's lack of a centralized waste management system. (Photo by Made Nagi/EPA/EFE)

This picture taken on November 1, 2014 shows Japanese body-painting artist Hikaru Cho (L) adding the finishing touches to a body painting of fingers sticking out from prison cell bars on the head of Ryonosuke Tanaka during “Tokyo Designers Week” in Tokyo. Cho, 21, was born to Chinese parents in Japan and burst onto Tokyo's art scene when she entered the city's Musashino Art University in 2012. Cho's ultimate ambition is to paint an entire – and naked – body. (Photo by Yoshikazu Tsuno/AFP Photo)