Aki Sasamoto: Point Reflection

Spiraling snail shells form the basis for Sasamoto’s latest performance and installation worksPublished on the occasion of her standout solo exhibition at the Queens Museum, Point Reflection is the first major volume devoted to the work of New York–based artist Aki Sasamoto (born 1980). Conceived as an artist’s book, Point Reflection centers on Sasamoto’s major installation Sink or Float, first presented at the 2022 Venice Biennale. Building on the artist’s idiosyncratic research into snail shell chirality—the direction in which the shell coils—as a cypher for thinking through questions of change, aging, (non)normativity, vulnerability and natural processes, Point Reflection brings together the diagrammatic visions, narrative experimentation, structured improvisations and stream-of-consciousness monologues characteristic of her performances and installations. The book features writing and drawings by Sasamoto, a critical essay by Lumi Tan, interviews with biologists conducted by the artist and an afterword by Queens Museum curator Hitomi Iwasaki.