Mariko Mori

About the Exhibition

Mariko Mori’s large photographs and video installations present futuristic scenes that meditate on the profusion of artifice in contemporary culture and extract elements of Eastern spiritual thought and art to express optimism for life in the next millennium. Mori was born in Tokyo in 1967, studied fashion design in Japan, and worked as a fashion model during the late 1980s. She attended art schools in London and New York, and her work reflects the combination of influences from Eastern and Western cultures. Mori’s work thus draws together new technologies and futuristic icons from the mediascape of the present and the spirituality and tradition of the past.

Empty Dream and Birth of a Star were both created in 1995, using computer imaging techniques that either seamlessly place Mori in a fantastic scene or transform her into a synthetic being. The same computer technology that Mori uses to make her mermaid figure appear and reappear in Empty Dream changes her into an oversized, plastic pop star doll in Birth of a Star. This photograph is presented in a light box (a format often used in advertising) and with a special, three-dimensional effect giving it a uniquely luminous quality. It is accompanied by a pop song composed and sung by the artist, which further enhances our experience of this captivatingly unreal figure.

In the 1996 photograph Last Departure and video Miko no Inori (The Shaman-Girl’s Prayer presented here in the installation Link of the Moon) Mori merges aspects of the present and future with spiritual traditions of the past. Both of these works are set in the ultramodern Kansai International Airport in Japan, and feature Mori dressed as a strange and mystical female being from the future. This figure comes to life in the video Miko no Inori, carefully turning a crystal ball over in her hands while transfixing the viewer with her gleaming eyes. A recording of Mori singing a haunting song in Japanese plays in the background to enhance and intensify the unsettlingly beautiful performance. By assuming the role of shaman-a human being who acts as an intermediary between the earthly world and an unknown spiritual realm-Mori imbues her futuristic techno-spectacle with a sensibility derived from Far Eastern transcendental religious beliefs.

Mori’s multimedia installation Nirvana incorporates four huge glass panel photographs, a clear acrylic, lotus-shaped sculpture outfitted with fiber-optic cable connected to a solar transmitting device, and a three-dimensional video. The entire installation conveys the emotional, intellectual, and spiritual states of enlightenment found in the writings and teachings of Buddhist philosophy and religion. The four photographs, Entropy of Love, (1996) Burning Desire, (1996-98) Mirror of Water, (1996-98) and Pure Land (1996-98), symbolize, respectively, the four natural forces in the world: air, fire, water, and earth.

Each photograph features a dramatic setting from locations around the world-the Painted Desert in Arizona, the Gobi Desert in Asia, the Massif Cave in France, and the Dead Sea in Israel-as well as Mori herself posing as a host of godlike or other supernatural beings.

Nirvana is Mori’s most complex and fully realized representation of her belief in the potential for high technology and Far Eastern spiritual philosophy to create a more positive society for the future. She combines these elements to present this vision while grounding it in surroundings, references, and ideas of the past and present.

Mori’s fantastic masquerade in spectacular displays transcends cultural boundaries and history, creating complex and innovative dreamscapes that alter our perception of the here and now and provide a possible look at tomorrow’s world.

—Dominic Molon

MCA Assistant Curator