PHD Group is pleased to announce "Planaria," the first solo exhibition by Kyoto-based artist Sasaoka Yuriko in Hong Kong, opening September 17.

In the three-channel video installation "Planaria" (2021), Sasaoka explores mortality through a surrealist ritual of death and regeneration. At the center of this narrative are 12 handmade dolls with fish heads collected by the artist. These dolls appear alongside 12 new embroidered canvases in a setting that extends from the ambitious, carnivalesque video installation.

Designed and built by Sasaoka herself, the stage, set, and props all play into her distinct visual language, which derives from global theater traditions and subverts monolithic historical narratives. As in her previous seminal work, "Icarus’ Bride" (2016-19), Sasaoka builds herself into these narratives as both observer and complicit passenger, this time not as a cursed bride but as a tortured figure grappling with the question of what it means to live in a hostile world.