Who Is Yuko Mohri, Japan's Artist for Venice Biennale 2024?
In Venice, Mohri will attach electrodes to rotting fruit to generate sound and light in a presentation that asks, 'which is more valuable, art or life?'
Yuko Mohri, Moré Moré (Leaky): Variations (2022). Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney with generous assistance from the Commonwealth through the Australia – Japan Foundation, which is part of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, The Japan Foundation, Sydney and the Pola Art Foundation, Yoshino Gypsum Art Foundation, and assistance from the Nomura Foundation. Courtesy the artist, Project Fulfill Art Space, and Mother's Tank Station Ltd. Exhibition view: Pier 2/3 Walsh Bay Arts Precinct, 23rd Biennale of Sydney, rīvus (12 March–13 June 2022). Courtesy 23rd Biennale of Sydney.
The Japan Foundation has announced Yuko Mohri as Japan's representative at the 60th Venice Biennale in 2024. Her exhibition will be curated by Sook-Kyung Lee, senior curator of international art at the Tate Modern.
Born in Kanagawa in 1980, Mohri now lives and works in Tokyo. She is known for dynamic installations that operate like machines or miniature ecosystems.
Her presentation in Venice will reference the pandemic, Venice's 2019 floods, and climate protests, positing the false dichotomy, 'which is more valuable, art or life?' The work will take the form of rotting fruit attached to electrodes that generate light and sound.
Earlier this year, Mohri presented I/O (2011–23), a work inspired by Han Kang's novel The White Book (2016), at the 14th Gwangju Biennale. In the work, a great length of printer paper suspended from the ceiling sways in response to an electric fan and the passing of visitors.
At last year's 23rd Biennale of Sydney, she presented Moré Moré (Leaky): Variations (2022) from a series of installations modelled on makeshift drainage systems created to deal with leaks in Tokyo's train and subway stations. The work is an elaborate system of buckets, tubes, umbrellas, plastic sheeting, bottles, pumps, vitrines, and household furniture that catches, reroutes, and recycles water as it falls from the ceiling.
Mohri said the improvised ways drips were caught around the city 'looked like different approaches to sculpting – they were treasure houses of inspiration.'
Among commercial galleries, she has recently shown at mother's tankstation in London, Yutaka Kikutake Gallery and Akio Nagasawa Gallery in Tokyo, and Lydgalleriet and Atelier Nord in Norway.
Other galleries who have shown her work include SCAI The Bathhouse in Tokyo and Jane Lombard Gallery in New York.
Mohri's work is held in the collections of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, M+ in Hong Kong, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, among others. —[O]
