Yuko Mohri

B. 1980 in Kanagawa, Japan. Lives and works in Tokyo.

Mohri is an installation artist who recasts reconfigured everyday items and machine parts collected in cities around the world into self-contained ‘ecosystems,’ channelling and conducting intangible energies such as magnetism, gravity, temperature and light.

With an artistic background in new-media art, Mohri’s practice engages with circuits and connectivity. She states that: ‘I prefer gravity, magnetism, light, and wind to control my work.’ Mohri positions forces such as gravity and electricity as otherworldly and unpredictable, and her installations insist on the powers of the nonhuman and the uncontrollable. The artist establishes her systems and then steps back, relinquishing her agency – her circuits are left to their own devices.

In sound-based assemblages, Mohri’s approach has alluded to experimental artists Erik Satie, Marcel Duchamp and John Cage, particularly through their relationship to chance. Mohri brings contingency and improvisation into her installations, aiming to capture the appearance of the world and human essence through the eyes of new materialism. Her kinetic sculptures can be observed through the keywords such as coincidences (what happened by chance), errors (what should not have happened), portents (what might happen) and silence (what did not happen?). In recent years, she also works on video and photography using scanner, through these ideas.

In 2015, Mohri received a grant from the Asian Cultural Council for a 6-month residency in New York. In the same year, she received Grand Prix, Nissan Art Award. In 2016, Mohri has undertaken a residency with the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and had in residence at Camden Arts Centre, London. In 2018, Mohri, as East Asian Cultural Exchange Envoy, visited 4 cities in China.

Mohri’s recent solo exhibitions include: slower than slowly, Mother’s Tankstation Limited, Dublin; summer rains, SCAI THE BATHHOUSE, Tokyo; Yuko Mohri: Assume That There Is Friction and Resistance, Towada Art Center, Aomori, Japan (2018); Same As It Ever Was, Project Fulfill Art Space, Taipei (2018); Voluta, Camden Arts Centre, London (2018); Dissémination, The National Museum of Modern Art Kyoto, Japan (2018); and her work has been included in group exhibitions such as: The 5th Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art: Immortality, Ekaterinburg, Russia (2019); Weavers of Worlds: A Century of Flux in Japanese Modern / Contemporary Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (2019); Visible Soul: Around the Asia Collection of Benesse Art Site Naoshima, Fukutake House, Okayama, Japan (2019); The 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Brisbane, Australia (2018); Childhood, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2018); Rehearsal, Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong (2018); Going Away Closer, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Wifred Lam, Havana (2018); Japanorama: New Vision on Art since 1970, Centre Pompidou-Metz (2017); 14th Biennale de Lyon (2017); Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2016, Kochi, India (2016); Yokohama Triennale 2014, Kanagawa, Japan (2014) etc. Her works are in the collections of Centre Pompidou, Paris; M+, Hong Kong; Musée d’art contemporain de Lyon; Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo; Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia etc.