On the occasion of her solo show at the Daiwa Anglo Japanese Foundation, London

Yukako Tanaka’s practice spans a range of media from video and sound installations to the use of the latest viewing technologies including holographic visualisation and tactile 3D modeling. These modes of creation culminate in a fusion of art, science and philosophy where her art is positioned as a potential vessel that contains and informs disciplinary processes and their varying approaches to knowledge production.

Tanaka reflects on the accelerated transition of the human condition in a new era which can be defined as pos-thuman / trans-human, where human realities are a hybrid generation of physical and virtual experiences. The accelerated blurring of the boundaries between virtual/online and AFK (away from keyboard) experiences, forced by the global pandemic, poses new questions to our comprehension of the world at large. For Tanaka, this transition emphasises existentialist questions: who are we?; why are we here?; and how do we apprehend our reality and ensure that we (continue to) exist? Such deep-rooted philosophical questions manifest in her works through explorations of memory-experience, time-space, and presence-absence.

In this Artist Talk,  Tanaka and curator & writer Fatos Ustek discussed the artist’s practice through visiting each component of the exhibition and drawing an overarching thematic framework that lies at the heart of Tanaka’s artworks. A video of the event can be viewed HERE.

A video interview on Yukako Tanaka’s work can be viewed here and on Daiwa Foundation website.