Aoi Sugita's video installation "Selfish Shells of the 21st Century" is in its final weeks at NTT InterCommunication Center (ICC) in Tokyo, where her solo presentation "emergencies! 049" closes on November 8, 2026. The show opened on September 12, and ICC lists Sugita among the exhibiting artists of "ICC Annual 2026: What Is Left, What Remains, and What We Take on", which ends the same day. On September 29, ICC added a short interview with the artist to its Channel ICC podcast.
The interview, in Japanese and just under five minutes long, belongs to ICC's series of conversations with artists exhibiting in ICC Annual 2026. Sugita gives an overview of the installation, explains its themes and techniques, describes her path so far and the background of the work, points out what to look for when viewing it, and discusses her plans. The same interview is also posted on the exhibition's page.
According to ICC, the starting point of the work is the progress of reproductive medicine, which means we already live in a world where cloned humans and so-called designer babies are technically possible. The exhibition text asks where the criteria for selecting "good" traits and excluding others actually come from. In the installation, ICC writes, Sugita uses a science-fiction narrative to express resistance to a society in which life is treated lightly, people and other living beings are turned into "things," and unnatural improvement and selection are encouraged. The work is dated 2024/26.
ICC's profile states that Sugita was born in 2002 and is enrolled in the Intermedia Art program of the Graduate School of Fine Arts at Tokyo University of the Arts. She researches real problems and prejudices rooted in society and combines them with unreal imagery in installations that use the whole space to put questions to the viewer. Her recent research concerns ethical questions in reproductive medicine, including gamete donation, surrogacy and designer babies, as well as the fragility of human perception and cognition and the exclusionary structures that grow out of it. She also gave an artist's talk on her emergencies! presentation in October.
