Yuko Mohri

Yuko Mohri is an installation artist who, with spatial sensitivity, creates kinetic sculptures using reconfigured everyday objects and machine parts. In doing so, she foregrounds the encounter between object and invisible phenomena like sound, gravity, wind and light. Her multi-sensory, experiential installations often form their own self-contained ecosystems, the infrastructure of which is pre-determined by the artist and the conditions of its environment. Past and ongoing projects have been influenced by Duchamp, inspired by repair as adaptive creativity in everyday life, and paid homage to musical scores by “composers of inadvertence” like Eric Satie, John Cage and Nam June Paik.

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Mohri was born in Kanagawa, Japan in 1980 and now lives and works in Tokyo. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Tama Art University in 2004 and a Masters of Fine Art from the Tokyo University of Arts in 2006.

Yuko Mohri will represent Japan at the 60th Venice Biennale, curated by Sook-Kyung Lee, director of Whitworth Gallery, The University of Manchester.

In 2015, Mohri received a grant from the Asian Cultural Council (ACC) for a residency in the United States. The same year she also received the Grand Prix at the Nissan Art Award. In 2018, she undertook a residency in China having been appointed as an East Asian Cultural Exchange Envoy by the Agency for Cultural Affairs, Japan and in 2022 she traveled to France as a Cité international des arts: Lauréats 2020 of Institut français.

International solo exhibitions include I/O, Atelier Nord, Oslo (2021); SP., Sony Park, Tokyo (2021); Voluta, Camden Arts Centre, London (2018); Assume That There is Friction and Resistance, Towada Art Center, Aomori, Japan (2018). Mohri has been included in a number of international group shows including the Gwangju Biennale (2023); Biennale of Sydney (2022); Asian Art Biennial (2021); Bienal de São Paulo (2021); Glasgow International (2021); Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong (2021); Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art, Russia (2019); Palais de Tokyo, France (2018); Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (2018); Biennale de Lyon, France (2017); Centre Pompidou-Metz, France (2017); Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India (2016); Yokohama Triennale (Japan, 2014), among others.

Mohri’s works are included in international institutional collections, including Centre Pompidou, France; M+, Hong Kong; Musée d’Art Contemporain de Lyon, France; Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Japan; and the National Museum of Modern Art Kyoto, Japan, Ashmolean Museum, England, among others.

Yuko Mohri: I/O