Aki Goto

Lives and works in Hudson Valley, NY

Artist statement

I am a video, sound, and installation artist from Japan, originally trained in textile art. My practice weaves personal history, motherhood, memory, and spirituality through video, sound, installation, drawing, and textile. I am interested in the space between what can be observed and what can only be sensed– between control and trust, pattern and coincidence, meaning and relationship. In 2009, I moved to NYC and began working as an artist assistant for Susan Cianciolo, an experience that profoundly transformed my understanding of textile art and spirituality. I relocated to the Catskill region in 2012, where my relationship with nature became part of this ongoing inquiry. During the 2020 lockdown, I began filming my children with my phone almost daily. What began as a way of being present within the intensity of motherhood became a sustained method of working. The spontaneity of mobile filming, often in a vertical format, allows me to capture the rawness of daily life– the joys, challenges, repetitions, and strange perspectives of a child’s mind. Editing on my phone became a way of staying attentive within uncertainty, while also recognizing the resilience and optimism rooted in my Asian cultural background. I am drawn to moments that glitch, repeat, or seem empty, what some might call random or meaningless. Yet I sense that these moments hold their own logic, like a language just beyond perception. I feel these moments are as meaningful, or as meaningless as any other. I...

Artwork