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.