SASAOKA YURIKO: ANIMALE

In her practice, Osaka-born artist Sasaoka Yuriko explores the ambiguous relationship between humans and the natural world through gesamtkunstwerk installations that reveal surrealist, immersive landscapes. Drawing inspiration from animism, masquerade, theater, puppetry, and Osaka’s comedy traditions, her work delves into fundamental questions around agency, mortality, and the narratives we tell ourselves.

For “Animale,” Sasaoka investigated the historical roles of animals in society—from fables and pets to their use in political diplomacy and labor. Her research began with the story of Wojtek, a Syrian brown bear who became a symbol of resilience during World War II. Discovered as an orphaned cub, Wojtek was sold to Polish soldiers and integrated into their military operations, where he reportedly carried ammunition and adopted human habits like smoking and drinking coffee. After the war, he was gifted to Edinburgh Zoo, where a memorial still stands in his honor.

Building on Wojtek’s life story and his mirroring of human behavior, Sasaoka expanded her research to other cases of working animals through residencies and projects in Berlin, Edinburgh, and Japan. These included school mascots, cosmetic testers, and the Soviet space dog Laika, who tragically perished in a spacecraft in 1957. This research culminated in “Animale” (2024–25), a large-scale sound and video installation featuring sculptures that resemble wild and domesticated creatures, from rabbits and dogs to raccoons and dolphins.

Set within a carnivalesque environment of curtains and carpets, the installation features larger, totem-like figures playing instruments, while smaller figures are arranged on vintage furniture, evoking the display of a toy shop or pet store. With screens for eyes and mouths—showing footage of the artist’s own face—and bodies crafted from vintage stuffed toys and recycled fabrics, the sculptures sing in Japanese: “Hello! / From today on, you’re my father / Teach me, labor, teach me / Laboring tomorrow, laboring the day after tomorrow, laboring the day after that and the day after that, waking up in five hours / So, am I still charming without a job?” By addressing the audience as “father,” the work underscores a dependency on humans for political, spiritual, and emotional guidance.

Resurrected through recycled fabrics, these cute yet Frankenstein-like chimeras perform a ritualistic musical theater that disarms and captivates. Yet, there is something uncannily familiar about these anthropomorphized creatures. Are they human, or are they animals? By blurring these boundaries, Sasaoka challenges our assumptions. The cyclical, endless refrain of “Laboring tomorrow, laboring the day after tomorrow, laboring the day after that” suggests that all entities—from dogs to humans—are bound by labor, and though we may resist the idea, our work often serves larger capitalistic or political agendas beyond our control.

Rather than focusing solely on exploitation, Sasaoka instead questions the socially constructed boundaries between us and the creatures we employ, dismantling ideas of human superiority. Through brightly hued sculptural forms animated by a hypnotic melody, she expresses a lucid existentialism in her distinctly charming artistic language. Viewers are drawn in: upon closer inspection, they see the artist’s own eyes, nose, and mouth on the screens, a reminder that humans and animals are not so different after all.

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