Aki Sasamoto
Grilled Diagrams
Studio Voltaire, London
Feb 4–Apr 19, 2026

I thought cooking was a low-risk activity until Aki Sasamoto came charging at me with a carving fork on an eight-meter handle. Just moments before, she had exploded a potato by catapulting it against a metal tray nailed to the wall, knocking me out of an uncaffeinated haze. For the next 40 minutes of her commission for London’s Studio Voltaire, titled Grilled Diagrams (2026), she kept her audience teetering on a knife edge, unsure what might detonate next or where we could seek shelter.

This dramatic tension resulted from the improvisatory approach for which Sasamoto has become known. As an undergraduate dance and studio art major, she studied how unscripted movement functions across contemporary dance and community-centric West African traditions, learning to maintain a sense of potential and responsiveness in her work. In her performance-installations today, improvisation facilitates her dynamic layering of formal concerns, such as the shapes she sculpts in her installations; the forging of unexpected relationships, such as mnemonic objects tied to characters and observations in her monologues; and personal reflections on friendships and places.

In Grilled Diagrams, the formal, relational, and personal revolved around the theme of pressure. Wielding utensils with absurdly long handles—a carving fork, a lemon juicer, a knife attached to a fulcrum on the wall—Sasamoto demanded clearance around her, compacting the audience into corners and along walls. This gesture of “squeezing the space,” to borrow her phrase, was later mirrored in her manipulation of azure gems, which she pressed with spatulas into triangles and squares atop a tray over a custom-built grill. In a monologue, Sasamoto explained that she shares an interest in rocks with her son. On a recent trip to Mexico, they learned from a gemologist that a rock’s density will determine how it is carried by water and thus where along a river it might be found. Further pondering the effects of gravity and heat while grilling a separate tray of red pumice, the artist then told us about two late friends, one cremated and the other buried. In life, when asked to curb their desires, one had chosen suppression, the other indulgence. As she narrated their stories, she drew a diagram on the awning above the grill, conflating her friends and rocks with subjects transformed by heat and pressure over time. “The only way to understand rocks,” she concluded, “is to hang out.” 

Well-timed releases punctuated the performance. After jabbing her carving fork toward the audience, for example, Sasamoto tipped out from the handle a stream of metal beads, which cascaded raucously onto the grill; the surprise reveal drew much amusement. Still, the highlight had to be the buttery scent that filled the air as she heated the tray of red pumice. It turned out she had hidden popcorn under the rocks. In this case, heat and pressure yielded delightful little edible explosions. One never knows what sort of journey her performance-installations will take you on, but there is one constant: Sasamoto is a masterful storyteller.

Chloe Chu is an art writer and editor based in London.