Aki Sasamoto’s Life Laboratory

The first mid-career solo exhibition by Aki Sasamoto (1980-), who is known for designing and configuring sculptures and devices in installations, in which she stages improvisational performances using them like a score. This exhibition will explore the two-decade-long interplay between sculptural creation and performance in Sasamoto’s art. From her foremost early-period works, which pose profound questions while humorously intertwining personal novel-like narratives, to her latest works emphasizing kinetic elements, it will examine artworks arising from her remarkable talent and ceaseless art practice.

Profile

Aki Sasamoto
Aki Sasamoto is a New York-based artist who works in performance, sculpture, dance, and whatever medium is effective for conveying her ideas. She has collaborated with musicians, choreographers, scientists and scholars, and she plays multiple roles as performer, sculptor, or director, working across the fields of visual art and the performing arts.
Born in 1980 in Kanagawa, Japan, Sasamoto left home for the UK as a teenager. She then moved to the USA, where she studied dance, art and mathematics at Wesleyan University. In 2007, she received her MFA from Columbia University in New York. She is currently Professor and Director of Graduate Studies at Yale University’s Sculpture Department.
Sasamoto’s institutional solo exhibitions include SculptureCenter, New York (2016); The Kitchen, New York (2017); the Queens Museum, New York (2023–2024); and Para Site, Hong Kong (2024). She has participated in international exhibitions including the 59th Venice Biennale (2022); the Aichi Triennale (2022); the Busan Biennale (2022); the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2016); the Shanghai Biennale (2016-2017); the Whitney Biennale (2010); and the Yokohama Triennale (2008).
She is the winner of the Calder Prize 2023, which honors a contemporary artist whose innovative work reflects the continuing legacy of Alexander Calder's genius.