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 posthuman/transhuman, 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 Fatoş Üstek will discuss 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.

About the contributors:

Yukako Tanaka is an artist, currently based in London who works with a wide range of media including video, photography, sculpture, sound and installation. In 2021, she completed an MA in Contemporary Art Practice at the Royal College of Art. She featured in the #SciCommHack, the Ethereal Antimatter Challenge that took place at CERN LHC, Geneva in 2020. She was the 2019 recipient of the prestigious Princess of Wales Award for RCA/ Contemporary Art Practice. Recent group exhibitions include:  London Grads Now. 21, Saatchi Gallery, London (2021); Sound and Vision, Royal Academy of Music, London (2020); Late Light, King’s College, London (2019); and SICF20, Spiral Hall, Tokyo (2019). She participated in the 2019 Coventry Biennial as a member of the collective Partisan Social Club.

Fatoş Üstek is a curator and writer, having worked internationally with large scale organizations, biennials and festivals, and commissions in the public realm for over two decades. She is Chair of New Contemporaries, UK; sits on the advisory board at Urbane Kuenste Ruhr, Germany, Jan van Eyck Academy, Netherlands and serves on the editorial board of Extra Extra Magazine. She ran the Liverpool Biennial and Roberts Institute of Art in the UK. She sits on selection and award committees including Scotland and Dutch Pavilions in Venice, Turner Prize 2020. She writes regularly for academic publications, art magazines, artist monographs, and exhibition catalogues.