Yuko Mohri: Compose / Pavilion of Japan at Venice Art Biennale 2024. Venice (Italy), April 19, 2024.
Official description: Known for her installations and sculptures centred on “events” that change with conditions such as their environment, the exhibition by Yuko Mohri and curated by Sook-Kyung Lee fills the pavilion with sound, light, movement, and smell.
Inspired by ad hoc efforts seen in Tokyo subway stations to stop water leaks, Moré Moré (Leaky) will artificially create leaks and then attempt to fix them, improvising with a variety of household goods available in Venice to construct kinetic sculpture. In a world where floods affect the environment, and especially in Venice, a city hit by a flood once every fifty years, the last one in 2019, Moré Moré will resonate with a wide range of issues.
Decomposition generates sounds and light by inserting electrodes into fruits and converting their moisture into electric signals. The fruits’ internal state shifts constantly, modulating the pitch of the drone and the intensity of the light while they start emitting a sweet smell of decay, dissolving or withering. With a title that etymologically signifies “to place together (com+pose)”, the exhibition asks what it means for people to be and work together in a world facing multiple global crises. Paradoxically, the crisis brings out the greatest creativity — inspired by the subway workers’ resourceful measures against water leak.