Aki Sasamoto – XYZ

XYZ is the first institutional exhibition in Europe dedicated to Aki Sasamoto. From September 17, 2026 to January 17, 2027, Pirelli HangarBicocca presents a journey through more than twenty years of the Japanese artist’s practice, spanning installations, sculptures, videos and performances.

Conceived specifically for the Shed, the exhibition explores the relationship between body and space, personal experience and relationships, logic and intuition.

The title XYZ already captures many of the exhibition’s layers: the last three letters of the alphabet, the three coordinates of Cartesian space and, at the same time, an expression used in the United States to discreetly suggest checking one’s zipper.

A play on meanings that reflects Sasamoto’s practice, constantly moving between rigor and absurdity, science and human behavior.

Born in Kanagawa in 1980 and now based in New York, Sasamoto works at the intersection of performance, sculpture, installation and video.

Dance, mathematics, social psychology, meteorology and eco-behavioral sciences enter her practice, transforming everyday objects and seemingly ordinary situations into unpredictable systems.

At the heart of her work remain the body, emotions and the complexity of interpersonal relationships.

The exhibition does not follow a linear narrative. Works from different moments in the artist’s career come together through diagrams, lines, modified objects and rotating mechanisms.

Each work retains its own autonomy, while together they form a constantly evolving system in which measurable data and emotional experience, control and chance coexist and continually challenge one another.