Yuko Mohri sets up environments, places objects within them, and observes what happens. Air currents, humidity, electrical charges, and the slow accumulation of dust—forces that normally escape notice—become the active ingredients of her installations, which remain in a constant state of becoming.
Opening 28 March and running until 6 September 2026, Entanglements is Yuko’s most extensive solo exhibition in Europe to date. The title captures precisely how her practice works: everything is connected to everything else, though these connections are rarely visible. Incorporating found objects in art, reworking musical instruments, and wiring them into electronic circuits, Mohri creates fascinating kinetic sculptures that respond to changes in air and temperature. Visitors’ presence and movement become part of the system, altering what they came to observe. Sound runs through it all.
Following her celebrated presentation at the Japan Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale in 2024, Entanglements marks a significant moment in Mohri’s ongoing investigation into the sensory environment and invisible forces that shape the world around us. In this conversation, she talks about leaks and breakdown, resistance and authorship, and why she still chases the spectral energy of a needle on a record.
hube: Do you think of your installations as systems you design, or as situations you enter into and negotiate with?
Yuko Mohri: I definitely lean toward the latter. I don’t really draft blueprints in advance; instead, I go to the site and build the installation by responding to the space and placing objects within it. It’s a process of gradually coming to understand the space through my interaction with those objects.
h: Imperceptible forces like air, dust, humidity, or electricity become noticeable in your work. What draws you to things that usually escape attention?
YM: Our daily lives are so hyper-scheduled—we’re constantly checking our phones, rushing to catch trains, and trying to keep up with social rhythms. But when we momentarily step back and shift our gaze, we catch glimpses of things that usually stay hidden. You might find yourself staring blankly and suddenly notice how fast the clouds are moving, or see a plastic grocery bag caught in an updraft, drifting gracefully. Even in New York, where I was staying until recently, I would occasionally come across scenes like that.
The complexity of these landscapes—revealed when I briefly step out of society’s dictated flow of time—brings unexpectedly rich moments. The social timeline is, after all, an anthropocentric rhythm, and we inevitably get locked into its schedules. But there must be many other temporal layers. When a door to one of those alternative timelines opens, a wonderfully rich atmosphere flows into my everyday life. That’s exactly the kind of gap I want to create in my own work.
