Curated by Roberta Tenconi with Tatiana Palenzona
Pirelli HangarBicocca presents XYZ, Aki Sasamoto’s (born in Kanagawa, Japan in 1980; currently lives and works in New York) first solo exhibition at a European institution, bringing together more than two decades of interdisciplinary experimentation, where science and intuition, mathematics and emotion, absurdity and seriousness, the everyday and the extraordinary coexist. Through sculptures, installations, and performative activities, Sasamoto engages with themes related to human and social relationships, memory, and emotional experience, offering a unique journey that bridges rigor and profound humanity.
Aki Sasamoto operates at the intersection of performance, sculpture, installation, and video. She creates environments and situations in which people and objects interact, exploring the relationship between body and space to engage audiences on multiple sensory levels. Through unconventional interactions with everyday objects—often manipulating and distorting them—Sasamoto stages a tragicomic spectacle that challenges traditional modes of perception, and rewrites the possibilities and limitations of sculptural and performative language.
The title “XYZ” suggests the exhibition’s layered nature, at once evoking the Cartesian axes, the final letters of the alphabet, and the notion of variables yet to be determined. Conceived as an open grid of possibilities and relationships, the exhibition unfolds through a dynamic sequence of installations, sculptures, videos, and performances. While each work maintains its autonomy, the show creates connections between projects from different moments of Sasamoto’s career, forming an evolving system of meanings that invites the audience to reflect on the present and on the possible trajectories of contemporary life.
