Sasaoka Yuriko

Through immersive video installations that often involve the idea of the marionette—a symbol of sociopolitical puppeteering and gendered normativity—she expands the interstitial spaces between the surreal and the lucid. In her works, she performs as multiple characters, liberating narratives from rigid ideas around gender, identity, and history. A recent work, “Planaria” (2021), utilizes handmade fish-head dolls to illustrate the loss of agency in events of individual or collective trauma. Whether through hand puppets, traditional marionettes, or animated figures, Sasaoka addresses critical topics, rendering the moving image and history itself as a fluid and conflicted narrative.

Sasaoka Yuriko was born in 1988 in Osaka, Japan. She received her MFA in oil painting and pursued a doctorate in media art from the Kyoto City University of Arts.

Her work is included in the forthcoming Osaka World Expo and has been shown at the 14th Shanghai Biennial (Shanghai); various festivals, biennales, and triennials across Japan; Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts (Taipei); VBKÖ (Vienna); and TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art (Szczecin, Poland). Her work has been collected by BY ART MATTERS, Hangzhou; Shiga Museum of Art, Shiga; Akeroyd Collection; ZHI Art Foundation, Beijing; and more.

^{Text courtesy PHD Group}