Mariko Mori is the most glamorous sort of alien. In her identity-probing, time-traveling photographs, sculptures, and 3-D videos, this young artist takes on roles that fuse the ancient and the futuristic, natural elements and high-tech artifice. In her sleek, seamless pieces,...
[more]Mariko Mori is the most glamorous sort of alien. In her identity-probing, time-traveling photographs, sculptures, and 3-D videos, this young artist takes on roles that fuse the ancient and the futuristic, natural elements and high-tech artifice. In her sleek, seamless pieces, Mori explores the "instability of identity" by presenting herself wearing glittering, self-designed costumes in highly unlikely settings.
She has portrayed herself as a sequined mermaid on the sands of an artificial indoor beach, as a space-age cyborg on crowded Tokyo subway trains, and as a Buddhist deity whose robes float over a panorama of breathtaking natural settings. Picture Cindy Sherman raiding Barbarella's wardrobe, foraging through a trunk of traditional Buddhist vestments, and employing a palette of digital tricks, and you've entered Mori's strange space-time continuum.
Since bursting onto the New York art scene in 1994, Mori has consistently melted the notoriously icy hearts of art critics, seducing global audiences with her technical and aesthetic wizardry and her exuberant pop treatment of classic cultural and religious subjects. Her work is not merely a critique of celebrity culture, mass media, and the gratuitous use of electronics. "I adopt technology so I can project my ideas more clearly," she says. At the 1998 Venice Biennale, lines of visitors formed to experience "Nirvana," her quasi-religious, live-action, animated 3-D video piece. Similar responses accompanied the exhibit's appearances at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, and the Serpentine Gallery in London.
[show less]
