Aki Sasamoto's: Unwelcome Restriction

‘I Couldn’t Drink and I Was Going Crazy’: Artist Aki Sasamoto Makes Whiskey Glasses While Reflecting on Life’s Unexpected Turns.

In an exclusive 2019 video interview, shot as part of Art21’s “New York Close Up” series, Japanese-born, New York-based artist Aki Sasamoto stops by a Brooklyn restaurant to use an assortment of glassware to make various sounds on a wooden table. Sasamoto explains that she developed a kidney condition and had to quit drinking for three months, during which she became pregnant.

In the video, Sasamoto travels to Urban Glass in Brooklyn, where she shoots whiskey glasses for a show at the “Bortolami” Gallery in Manhattan. Glassware; a notoriously delicate art medium. Sasamoto struggles with the precision needed to cast perfectly even glasses and pounces at the precise moment of casting the shape: just a second too late, and the sphere is destroyed. Sasamoto sees similarities in her sculptural attempts to create objects with the “illusion of control” over her life, though she says she never intended to be a mother, “now I am.”

“Everything is constantly moving. Whatever I thought I had control over, whatever I thought I was, will change in front of me,” she said. “That, to me, is exciting—in life and sculpture.”

This is an installment of “Art on Video,” a collaboration between Artnet News and Art21 that brings you clips of news-making artists. learn about the organization’s educational programs at Art21.org.