The Calder Foundation has announced New York-based artist Aki Sasamoto to be the winner of this year’s Calder Prize. Awarded biannually to artists who continue the legacy of Alexander Calder, the prize consists of $50,000, a three-month residency at Atelier Calder and the placement of the winning artist’s defining works in a public collection.
Born in 1980 in Yokohama, Japan, Sasamoto is best known for her choreographic installations that capture the absurd in everyday life. Her recent work, Sink or Float, in which random objects floated on a ventilating industrial sink, was featured at the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022.
‘Aki Sasamoto uses everyday objects, movement, set design, and food in her performances to evoke the absurdity of the human experience. She improvises environmental elements such as equations or sounds in ways that are impossible to anticipate. This intangibility keeps us on our toes and somehow coalesces into magical coherence’, Alexander S. C. Rowe, co-founder of the Calder Foundation, said in a statement.
