Aki Sasamoto’s Life Laboratory

From August to November 2025, the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo will host the first mid-career retrospective for Aki Sasamoto (1980–). The exhibition will provide an introduction to the New York–based Sasamoto’s oeuvre and explore how her themes and methods have evolved over two decades as a working artist.

From performance and dance to installations and video, Sasamoto combines and crosses media freely as her ideas demand. She is best known for improvisational performances inside custom-built spaces incorporating sculptures and devices she prepares herself. Her early works skillfully blended everyday gestures and acts with witty narration reminiscent of the Japanese literary form known as the shishosetsu or “I novel,” examining propensities, habits, and patterns of activity to analyze the nature of the individual personality. In more recent years, she has incorporated observations of the weather and of plant and animal ecosystems into her narratives and the structure of her work. More than mere tools for accentuating these narratives, her elaborately crafted sculptures become scores prompting unexpected turns in her improvisational performances.

Visitors to the exhibition will have the opportunity to examine these spaces as installations before and after the performances to be held periodically throughout the exhibition period. The exhibition will be a dynamic survey of Sasamoto’s unique talents, from notable early works to more kinetic recent creations.

Exhibition Highlights

1. Covers entire career to date of internationally acclaimed artist Aki Sasamoto, from early to latest works
The exhibition will survey twenty years of activity by Aki Sasamoto, from notable early achievements to recent works with more pronounced kinetic elements. Changes in Sasamoto’s themes and methods will be revealed through multifaceted exhibits including photographs, models, diagrams created during performance, video, and reconstructions of Sasamoto’s most acclaimed performance/installation spaces.

2. Four important performance/installation works performed by Aki Sasamoto multiple times during the exhibition period
Sasamoto will stage improvisational performances in installation spaces multiple times within the exhibition period. A total of four pieces will be performed: Strange Attractors, which debuted at the 2010 Whitney Biennale; Skewed Lies from MoMA PS1 (New York) in 2010; Spirits Cubed, commissioned by the Hirosaki Museum of Contemporary Art during the COVID-19 pandemic; and Sounding Lines, which was first performed last year in Hong Kong.

3. Reconsideration of the link between performance and museums through Aki Sasamoto’s work
Sasamoto’s oeuvre roams freely between the two domains of the museum and the performing arts. This exhibition will explore this fluidity and the possibilities it suggests for various approaches to recording, preserving, and handing down performances. Discounted “twin tickets” will also be available, permitting a second visit to the venue to see a performance and affording deeper insight into Sasamoto’s work.

4. Release of first Aki Sasamoto monograph to coincide with exhibition
A monograph will be published during the exhibition offering a midcareer survey of Sasamoto’s oeuvre, focusing chiefly on the works at the exhibition itself. The book will include commentary from Sasamoto herself, new photographs of her installations, essays by exhibition curators, and a chronology of works.

Artist Profile

All images 🄫Aki Sasamoto. Courtesy of Take Ninagawa, Tokyo