iPirelli HangarBicoccaBicocca
Aki Sasamoto: XYZ
Two decades of Aki Sasamoto's installations, sculptures, videos and performances in the Shed, using graphs, diagrams and rotating mechanisms to probe human connection.
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Eight steel springs are strung across the Shed like a spider's web; every so often a motorised arm strikes one and sends a ripple down its length. Giant wooden fishing lures hang between them, with knives and whisks pushed through.
This is Sasamoto's first institutional show in Europe, 20 years of work in one hall. Most pieces double as sets for her performances: a bar, a wall of industrial washers, a room built to her own body's size. Without her, whiskey glasses still spin in Murano glass bowls and melting ice drips onto microphones. Doppiozero's critic said the first feeling is that a conclusion is missing. Work 10 is in the museum's toilets: two loo rolls hung opposite ways, the one Italian bathroom argument that isn't about the bidet.
Come for a performance if you can. In Wrong Happy Hour you enter the bar for a beer and she pushes the back wall in until everyone is squeezed out (4pm, 24 October). Entry is free; online slots get priority.
Look for
Sounding Lines
Look up as you enter: eight suspended springs cross like a web, motorised arms strike them at random, and giant painted fishing lures hang between them with knives, whisks and strainers pushed through.
catch or be caught
Two steel crab traps rise and fall on a motor, opening as they touch the carpet and closing again as they lift.
Past in a future tense
Four whiskey glasses spin at different speeds inside large Murano glass bowls on a bar counter, driven by air piped through silver ducts.
Delicate Cycle
A wall of industrial washers and dryers, a big ball of tangled sheets, and two stuffed birds perched on sprinkler pipes near the ceiling, with cameras showing their view on nearby monitors.
Baking sheet is never flat
Eleven baking trays on the wall, each with a potato hanging from a bungee cord; in performance she flings the potatoes at the trays and dents them.
Good for
- Cheap Culture
- Locals Who've Seen It All
- Nerding Out
Skip if
You want finished objects to look at: most pieces here are stage props waiting for her performances.
With kids
Children are welcome but must be held by the hand, and nothing can be touched. Many fragile pieces sit on the floor or hang from the ceiling, and some move on motors and springs.
Also at Pirelli HangarBicocca
On now nearby
Image credits
5
- Aki Sasamoto: XYZCourtesy of Pirelli HangarBicocca
- Mona Hatoum: Over, under and in betweenPh. Roberto Marossi, Courtesy Fondazione Prada
- Pina Bausch, Le Sacre du printempsCourtesy of Museo Teatrale alla Scala
- Photo Grant Deloitte 2026Courtesy of Triennale Milano
- Pirelli HangarBicoccaSilvana Gallio / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0