yuko mohri tunes into the unseen energies connecting people and objects

inside yuko mohri’s shifting world of noise, circuits, and chance

Following her acclaimed presentation at the Japan Pavilion during the 2024 Venice Biennale, Japanese artist Yuko Mohri returns with Entanglements, her most extensive solo exhibition in Europe to date. Presented at Centro Botín in Spain, the exhibition transforms the Renzo Piano-designed arts center into a living network of sound, movement, energy, and improvisation. Across kinetic sculptures, self-playing instruments, leaking systems, and delicate electronic circuits, Mohri invites visitors into environments shaped as much by humidity, dust, air, and chance as by the artist herself.

Originally developed at Pirelli HangarBicocca and expanded in Santander with new paintings and a site-specific film and soundscape inspired by the coastline, Entanglements reflects Mohri’s long-standing fascination with invisible systems through installations that draw from experimental music, everyday objects, and organic processes.

For Mohri, these unseen forces are neither purely hopeful nor unsettling. Instead, they exist independently of us, continuously shaping the world whether we notice them or not. ‘Invisible forces themselves, much like the wind flowing unseen through a forest, are always at work in the world,’ she tells designboom. ‘Entanglements might be an expression of both hope and fragility, or perhaps it’s neither.’

all images courtesy of Yuko Mohri and Centro Botín

listening beyond the visible

Sound has always occupied a central role in Mohri’s practice. Before becoming internationally known for her installations, the artist studied fine arts at Tokyo University of the Arts while also playing in the punk band Sisforsound, an experience that continues to shape the rhythm and sensibility of her work today. In her installations, pianos respond to recordings of forests and coastlines, decomposing fruit powers electronic systems, and motors, fans, and scanners become part of improvised sonic compositions.

Yet Mohri is more interested in the overlooked noises surrounding it. ‘People tend to focus only on the musical notes,’ she explains. ‘But I’m hoping they also listen to the whir of the motor and the strike of the piano equally.’ For the artist, acknowledging background noise, the sounds we usually try to erase, fundamentally changes the way a space is experienced. This sensitivity to unnoticed phenomena also extends to the materials she uses. Spoons, umbrellas, kitchen tools, washing gloves, leaking pipes, and scraps of electronics appear throughout her installations, often repurposed into unexpectedly delicate systems. ‘Even inexpensive, commonplace materials can bring a real sense of novelty to a piece when you use them in an unexpected way,’ she shares with us.

Yuko Mohri’s most extensive solo exhibition in Europe to date

installations shaped by instability and chance

Mohri builds environments that remain unstable and constantly responsive to their surroundings. Works shift depending on air currents, moisture levels, electrical feedback, or environmental debris collected from the exhibition space itself. Her installations are never entirely complete and continue adapting over time, almost like living organisms, with a sense of openness that extends to the audience as well. Visitors move through the systems becoming part of the circulation of sound, movement, and energy within the exhibition.

Asked whether viewers function almost like living components inside the work, Mohri answers: ‘I certainly hope so.’

At the center of Entanglements is the idea that nothing exists independently. The exhibition title refers to the invisible relationships linking objects, people, forces, and environments into constantly evolving networks. Mohri’s works reveal how fragile and interconnected these systems already are, whether technological, ecological, or social.

the exhibition transforms the Renzo Piano-designed arts center into a living network

toward continuous change

Although Entanglements began developing before the 2024 Venice Biennale opened, Mohri acknowledges that the experience of presenting her work to such an international audience expanded her worldview. For the Santander presentation, she introduced new paintings and an entirely new work that she describes as so fresh she still does not fully understand it herself.

Rather than framing her practice as a steady progression toward resolution, Mohri prefers to think in terms of continuous transformation. ‘I just hope that, much like life itself, it remains full of continuous change,’ she reflects.

Ultimately, the artist hopes visitors leave the exhibition carrying a slightly altered perception of the world around them. Not necessarily with answers, but with greater attentiveness toward the hidden energies embedded within everyday life.‘If visitors leave my exhibition and find that the everyday scenery they walk through looks even just a little bit different,’ Mohri says, ‘I honestly couldn’t be happier.’

sound, movement, energy, and improvisation fill the space