Aki Sasamoto
From September 17, 2026, to January 17, 2027, Pirelli HangarBicocca presents "XYZ," Aki Sasamoto's 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: the artist
Aki Sasamoto (born in Kanagawa, Japan in 1980; currently lives and works in New York) 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.
Drawing from diverse disciplines such as dance, mathematics, social psychology, meteorology, and eco-behavioral sciences, her works—hybrid in both form and content—translate lived experiences and personal narratives into metaphorical imagery, evoking liminal moments and new narratives, suspended between logic and intuition.
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. Thus, the artist’s works become a grounding of the reality that surrounds her.
The exhibition “XYZ” at Pirelli HangarBicocca
The exhibition “XYZ” marks the first institutional show dedicated to the Japanese artist in Europe. The title immediately suggests the exhibition’s layered nature, as it presents a selection of works spanning two decades of Sasamoto’s practice.
Conceived by Sasamoto specifically for Pirelli HangarBicocca, the exhibition unfolds as a dynamic sequence of installations, sculptures, videos, and performances that explore ideas of connection, the complexity of relationships, and the influence of societal norms and interpersonal interactions on the body and memory.
Spanning over twenty years of interdisciplinary experimentation, the show project emphasizes the artist’s ability to reconcile seemingly opposing elements—performance and sculpture, science and intuition, absurdity and discipline—in works that are simultaneously playful, rigorous, and deeply humane.
References to mathematics recur throughout the exhibition path in the form of graphs, diagrams, lines, and rotating mechanisms that connect the works, bringing together material and immaterial dimensions and creating a constant tension between measurable data and emotional experience.
