KOKO’s Love: About Yuki Daydream Reality, 2019, Six-channel mixed media video installation, 14’ x 10’ x 16’ tall 
John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, Wisconsin

Daydream Reality is part of an ongoing series of KOKO’s Love, an East Asian/Asian American hybrid soap dramedy, that further delves into the fictional character of Yuki, the daughter of the Sakimoto patriarch Hiroshi and her quest for familial approval, especially from her father. This six-channel video is structured so it is half pet store dreamscape where her hoped-for dog lives and half living room reality, outfitted with a handwritten note and mannequins hanging from the ceiling that activate her actual home life.

New videos are embedded in Yuki’s dream world: “Super Pug, Super Pug, Super Pug” (2019) on the pet store sales shelf and Super Pug Daydreams and Nightmares (2018) within a pug-themed dollhouse with a rotating, tiered dog cake acting as a nightmarish look into Yuki’s trapped dreams. In these videos, a new cast of characters is introduced, including Super Pug, an imaginary pretend friend and superhero who fights her battles with those naysayers that are not allowing her in real life to have a pet dog. The other three pets in Yuki’s daydreams are Meow (cat), Bubbles (fish), and Chirp (bird), who plead their case as a silent video in each of the three birdcages. Her reality is KOKO’s Love: Episode 1 (2014) that plays on the living room television set.