During Grilled Diagrams, Aki Sasamoto’s first institutional solo exhibition in the UK, the artist will stage four live performances within her major new installation.

Drawing inspiration from televised cooking shows and street food carts, Sasamoto’s performances will unfold as live, improvised acts of movement and drawing. Each will centre around a custom-built, oversized griddle and the seemingly unremarkable, yet intricate manipulation of ingredients across the griddle's surface, visible in a three-metre-long, angled mirror.

The exhibition comprises a site-sensitive installation that developed from Sasamoto’s observations of daily life, as well as her curiosity about systems and processes – in this case, the experience of cooking large quantities of food on outdoor griddles. Incorporating everyday items and contemporary detritus, her meticulously staged installation functions as a prompt or score for structured improvisation: challenging conventional definitions of sculpture and instead inviting active participation in her unfolding narratives.

Sasamoto’s work incisively probes the tension between disorder and control. Her performances, often staged as vivid and digressive monologues, weave together fables, anecdotes and autobiographical fragments, inviting her audiences to retune their perceptions of the seemingly mundane.