Aki Goto

Annex Space

Combining the tireless diaristic rigor of Jonas Mekas with the technical sagacity of Shigeko Kubota, Aki Goto's unorthodox home videos transform the often unspectacular daily activities surrounding parenting and adolescence into a creative collaboration –– a theater of growth that is equally humorous, tender, and improvised. Applying her background as an avant-garde musician with DIY animation and special effects, Goto's videos become a shimmering psychedelic collision of players and events, often overlooked. What is radical about Goto's work, you may ask? Imagine if Mekas (the father of avant-garde cinema) and Kubota (the mother of video art) had an art lovechild.

In Eyes on Shine, Aki Goto's sophomoric exhibition at Europa's New York location, the artist debuts a multi-screen installation that asserts a digital, moving-image practice in three-dimensional space. Widely known for her nearly daily video studies and sketches published on her personal Instagram account, Eyes on Shine shares three recent videos, each made between 2023 and 2025: the land is the warmth, Thundery, and God Amused, all of which inhabit the debris of domestic life.

—Lola Kramer

Aki Goto was born in Tokyo, Japan in 1978, and raised in the Chiba prefecture, she later returned to Tokyo to study at the Tama Art University. Goto has shown work at Clearing in Beverly Hills and NY, Europa in NYC, Nonaka-Hill Gallery in LA, Starr Suites in Brooklyn, NADA/Foreland in Catskill NY, Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art in New Paltz NY, Gaspesie Museum in Quebec, Arts of Life in Chicago, Take Ninagawa Gallery in Tokyo. Goto was awarded an acquisition of Hudson Valley Artists Annual Purchase Award at Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art (2024). She has toured musically in the Northeast and was awarded Best Experimental Short at the Greenpoint Film Festival (2011)