Mariko Mori
Mariko Mori | |
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Born | Tokyo, Japan |
Nationality | Japanese |
Known for | photography, media art |
Movement | Contemporary Art |
Mariko Mori (森 万里子, Mori Mariko, born 1967 in Tokyo, Japan) is a contemporary Japanese video and photographic artist.
Biography
Mariko Mori was born in Tokyo in 1967. Mori's father is an inventor and real estate tycoon, and her mother is a Historian of European Art. While studying at Bunka Fashion College in Tokyo in the late 1980s, Mori worked as a fashion model. It was at that time that she had her first exhibitions. In 1989, she moved to London to study at the Chelsea College of Art and Design and studied there until 1992.[1] After graduating, she moved to New York City and she participated in the Independent Study program at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Mariko Mori now resides in New York and Tokyo.
Exhibitions and works
Mori's early works, such as her photograph Play with Me, use her own body as the subject, and she costumes herself as sexualized, technological alien woman in everyday scenes.
The juxtaposition of Eastern mythology with Western culture is a common theme in Mori's works, often through layering photography and digital imaging, such as in her 1995 installation Birth of a Star. Later works, such as Nirvana show her as a goddess, transcending her early roles via technology and image, and abandoning realistic urban scenes for more alien landscapes.
Play With Me (1994): Standing outside a Tokyo toy store, Mori dressed herself as a sexy cyborg—with light blue hair in long ponytails, metallic blue plastic in a hard-shell articulation of erotic body parts, silver plastic gloves, and a dress. Mori was trying to show that she connects to the robotic toys inside the store, but also to show her available unemotional sexuality.[2]
Subway (1994): Mori stood in a Tokyo subway car dressed as if she just landed from outer space. She was dressed in a silver metallic costume with a headset, microphone, and push-buttons on her forearm. This transformation—along with Play With Me—was to explore different constructed identities.[2]
Empty Dream (1995): Mori manipulates a photo of a real public swimming place as she inserts herself in a blue plastic mermaid costume in several locations within the scene. This image refers to, among other things, the rising of technology and philosophy around the creation of man through biotechnology.[2]
Oneness (2002): Oneness presents the dimensions of spirituality, photography and fashion into a deep look on the originality of the artist's skill hence the usage of technology's brand new trends. The outlook designs of Oneness gathers the capacity nevertheless the hability to use advanced technology knowledge converted to some sort of mystic and UFO's.[3]
Including in Oneness you can find some sub-works such as the Wave-UFO, a 6.000 kg dome where the visitor, once inside it, can see projected paintings reworked with computer graphics and then transformed into photographs in the interior dome of the Wave UFO.[3] Conceptualization and prototyping of the Wave UFO was realized during Mori's residency at Eyebeam Art+Technology Center in Chelsea, New York.[4] Mori is represented by Sean Kelly Gallery.
External links
- Mariko Mori at Galerie Perrotin [1]
- Exclusive Mariko Mori video
- Her sculpture Tom Na H-iu, driven by the Super-Kamiokande neutrino observatory
- Mori interview at the Journal of Contemporary Art
- Mariko Mori at Brooklyn Museum of Art: Review of exhibition Empty Dream, Asian Art News, November 1999
- Shibuya River Mori Profile with links
- Tea With Mariko at artnet.com
- Mariko Mori compared to Salvador Dali
- Mori profile at deitch.com
- Oneness exhibition at deitch.com
- Wave UFO at Eyebeam at eyebeam.org
References
- ^ Hallmark, Kara Kelley. 2007. Encyclopedia of Asian American artists. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press. p. 129.
- ^ a b c Fineberg, Jonathan (2000). Art Since 1940. Strategies of Being (Second ed.). Upper Saddle, New Jersey: Prentice Hill Publishers. pp. 494–5. ISBN 0-13-183978-0.
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(help) - ^ a b Deitch Projects
- ^ Wave UFO at Eyebeam