Yoshie Sakai is a multidisciplinary artist (video, sculpture, installation, performance), and the recipient of the 2021/22 City of Los Angeles (COLA) Individual Master Artist Fellowship and the 2012 California Community Foundation for Visual Artists Emerging Artist Fellowship. She has attended residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, and the Kohler Arts/Industry Residency (Foundry). Her work has been shown at institutions such as the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, California State University Dominguez Hills University Art Gallery, Verge Center for the Arts, Antenna, and the Chinese American Museum Los Angeles, as well as internationally (Cambodia, Canada, Germany, and Japan).
I create characters that respond and negotiate contemporary social issues of cultural identity, gender roles, and familial and personal relationships. As a subtly transgressive undercover cultural agent, I expose the absurdities of manipulative social structures while humorously struggling and reveling in them as a participant. By staging my videos within intimate installations that become psychological and imaginative playhouses, I give form to our vulnerability and evoking, sometimes, nervous laughter. My installations transform found objects into imaginary interiors grounded in both tangible and fantastical domesticity. My sculptures are large colorful over-the-top installations and interior domestic spaces, where all components of my work interwoven together create a comprehensive and immersive narrative— an integral whole experience for the viewer based via research processes, such as the interview and observation (Cinéma vérité), writing scripts, designing characters, costumes and sets/apparatuses. My work is about accessibility while nurturing human connection. I am presently focusing on projects about grandparents and the challenges within a family structure of varying generations. I am currently working on the ”Grandma Entertainment Franchise (GEF),” bringing together three bodies of work, which includes the “Grandma Day Spa,” “Grandma Nightclub,” and “Grandma Amusement Park”—three distinct but interconnected, immersive installations, composed of my video and sculptural work. This multimedia installation will function as a critique of capitalism’s production of space and our ways of being, while also drawing on popular forms of entertainment, media, and the wellness industry to engage diverse audiences, especially those historically devalued, ignored, and seen as burdens. The “GEF” will serve as a space to celebrate the vitality of our disenfranchised senior population and to bring attention to their sacrifices made within our capitalistic society and its treatment and attitude towards them.