In the summer of 2025, Zeapoe Matalda was invited to participate in the Shiro Oni Studio Artist Residency in Fujioka, Japan. Part of the residency program included donating a piece of artwork, performing taiko drum in the Onishi Annual Music Festival, and participating in an artist exhibition. Matalda hand built a West African Kora as her donation to the Shiro Oni studio with the support of the residency staff and the other artists. She chose to build the kora in order to learn more about her own history as a daughter of West African immigrants and as a way to share a part of her heritage with the people of Onishi. The kora is a traditional 21-string West African harp-lute that originated in the 18th century within the Kaabu Empire (modern day Senegal, The Gambia, and Guinea-Bissau). Matalda also made a shekere gourd with a hand-painted calabash she found at the flee market in Fujioka, Japan. A shekere gourd is a West African percussion instrument that’s made from a dried calabash gourd covered in a net woven with beads or cowrie shells.