Mariko Mori was born in Tokyo in 1967. The daughter of an art historian and an inventor, Mori studied fashion design in college and briefly worked as a model. Mori then pursued art at the Chelsea College of Art & Design in London (1989–92) and at the Whitney Museum of American Art's Independent Study Program in New York (1992–93). In her early photographs, such as Subway (1994) and Play with Me (1994), Mori appears as the cyborg heroine of a film who navigates the environs of Tokyo. In the performance Tea Ceremony (1995), Mori wore the garb of a prototypical Japanese female office worker and mechanically served tea to businessmen who passed her on the street. Body Capsule (1995), a transparent Plexiglas container just big enough for Mori's body, appears in the photograph Beginning of the End (1995) and later in the video installation Link (2000). For the panoramic photograph Empty Dream (1995), the artist took advantage of new technological advancements and inserted herself—this time in the guise of a glossy futuristic mermaid—into the single frame four times. Mori's use of her own face in various guises has prompted frequent comparisons between her work and that of Cindy Sherman. Mori's hybridized self began to assume more spiritual incarnations in films like Miko no Inori (The Shaman-Girl's Prayer ) (1996) and Nirvana (1996–97). In the series of photomurals Esoteric Cosmos (1996–98), which is related to Nirvana, the artist appears as a futuristic goddess hovering amid rocky terrains, seascapes, and stalagmite-covered caves.
With Dream Temple (1999), Mori departed from the use of her own image to portray sites of futuristic spirituality and instead began to create entire environments to facilitate the viewer's own transcendental experience. For Dream Temple, the viewer enters a reconstruction of the 18th-century Yumedono Hall in the Hōryū-ji Temple in Japan to encounter a massive video projection on the domed ceiling. In another immersive environ, Wave UFO (1999–2003), three viewers enter a sleek, biomorphic pod and are fitted with brain-wave electrode headsets capable of projecting images of the wearer's brain waves. As extra-sensory information is transformed into visual imagery, the participants enjoy a novel form of communication for a few minutes before Mori's animation Connected Worldappears on the rounded ceiling of the inner chamber. In 2007 Mori presented the sculptures Tom Na H-iu, Roundstone, and Flatstone at Deitch Projects in New York, extending her interest from spirituality to interactive technology.
Solo exhibitions of Mori's work have been organized by Centre National d'Art Contemporain de Grenoble (1996), Dallas Museum of Art (1997), Los Angeles County Museum of Art (1998), The Serpentine Gallery in London (1998), Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg (1999), Fondazione Prada in Milan (1999), Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris (2000), Kunsthaus Bregenz (2003), Koyodo Museum in Chino, Japan (2006), Groninger Museum in Holland (2007), and the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead (2009). Her work has also been included in major group exhibitions like Venice Biennale (1997 and 2003, Istanbul Bienali (1997), Sydney Biennial (2000), Shanghai Biennale (2000), São Paolo Bienal (2002), Moving Pictures at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (2003), and Singapore Biennale (2006). Mori lives and works in New York.
Sources
Conceptual Art and Fashion in the 21st Century by Shirin Abedinirad
www.guggenheim.org
www.artnet.com/artists