Saki Satom
Saki Satom was born in Tokyo. She lives and works in London.
Saki Satom makes drawings, videos and installations. She explores the behavioral norm and conventional wisdom, often focusing on codes and practices that tend to go largely unnoticed. She is drawn to bland urban spaces and day-to-day social rituals; the world she presents is, on the face of it, a deeply familiar one. But in each of her works she introduces a note of gratuity that calls everything around it into question.
In Desk Project, (2005) for instance, she addresses a social convention in terms that touch on both the experience of deracination and the ritualistic character of social dialogue. The work consists of four desks with monitors embedded in them, symmetrically arranged in a pristine, carpeted room. Showing on the monitors are interviews, but to view them the visitor has to crawl under the desks. In the interviews, Satom quizzes four professionals on the subject of the social kiss (what the French call la bise), asking them when and how to greet people with a kiss, and how the custom varies from place to place. Her interviewees—the French cultural attaché, an etiquette teacher, a sociologist and the director of a communications company—are sharp and articulate, but their answers occasionally seem improvised and they unknowingly contradict one another. The piece reminds us that in today’s globalising world, social codes are in flux and cross-cultural exchange is still riddled with hitches and embarrassments. The desks are crucial: they serve both as emblems of the global corporation and as places of temporary refuge, like Tokyo’s capsule hotels or the hideaways of children. And an understated humour is discernible in the contradictory demands that are made on the viewer--the piece offers advice on seemly behaviour while asking you to adopt a position that is itself unseemly.
Saki Satom's recent solo shows include, Selected Works, Gallery Pfeister, Bornholm, Denmark (2008); One Severn Street, Birmingham, (2005); Saki Satom, Gasworks, London, (2005); YVAI, Think Zone, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2002) and Kojimachi Gallery, Tokyo (2000).
She has shown work in a number of group shows, including No Time To Lose, Peacock Visual Arts, Aberdeen (2008); Paper Bag lady and Other Stories, Timothy Taylor Gallery, London (2007); Drawing 2007, Drawingroom, London (2007), New Reform, Netwerk Galerij, Aalst, Belgium (2006); Replay, FACT, Liverpool (2005); Saki+Eri, Ilju Art House, Seoul (2004); Mediarena, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, (2004); Another World Museum, Gallery Side2, Tokyo, (2003); Under Construction, Opera City Art Gallery, Tokyo, (2002); Performing Bodies, Tate Modern, London (2000); Satom has had residencies at Camden Arts Centre, London (2006), and Tanera Mor International Artists Workshop, Scotland (2008). For the second, she produced a postage stamp as a part of her Treasure Island Project. See Tanera Mor Post Office website.
