Aki Inomata on Posthuman Art: Hermit Crabs, 3D-Printed Clouds, and Tsunami Shells

Japanese artist Aki Inomata (born 1983, Tokyo) presented her performance "Thinking of Yesterday's Sky" at Artissima in Turin on October 30, 2025, as part of the anonymous art project, a Japanese contemporary art initiative launched in 2023 and hosted by Artissima for the first time. The performance uses water, milk, and a secret ingredient to "write" clouds from the previous day into glasses, which visitors then drink, transforming time into a physical experience. Inomata's practice spans bioart and new media, often involving non-human collaborators: hermit crabs choosing 3D-printed shells shaped like city skylines (Tokyo, Paris), mollusks recording tsunami trauma on their shells, and hacked 3D printers extruding liquids. She emphasizes ethical collaboration with biologists, shared authorship, and technology as a means to reveal invisible ecological processes rather than spectacle. Her work draws on Japanese cultural attention to small creatures, reflected in language (yadokari for hermit crab, meaning "house"). She imagines a "laboratory of time" room where audiences perceive multiple temporalities simultaneously. Inomata hopes viewers feel part of nature and recognize how small choices affect other beings and shared environments.