Mariko Mori.
Dream Temple
Mariko Mori
has rapidly become one of the best-known and most innovative artists in the
field of multi-media art. Born in Tokyo in 1967, she lives and works in New
York and Tokyo.
In the 1980s she developed a kind of art in which a great variety of media were
used, including photography, video and performance, and she has recently made
her first works with the new three-dimensional technology. Her output is characterized
by a complex range of images in which diverse influences and sources converge:
techno-pop culture, Oriental tradition and science.
Her artistic research involves experimentation with sophisticated techniques,
such as three-dimensional video and interactive virtual reality. Her fantastic,
utopian aesthetic not only expresses the current desire for concord transcending
national unity but is also a result of her personal situation as an Oriental
woman with her upbringing reflecting her family origins and culture. In fact
Mori states: ""in the next millennium, the power and the energy of the human
spirit should unify the world in peace and harmony, without any cultural or
national borders".
One of Mori's most complex works is Dream Temple, a monumental multi-media installation
in which the artist has combined the world of modern technology with the poetic
universe of art, finding inspiration in the tradition of Japanese architecture
in order to create a work in which scientific knowledge blends with a mystical
atmosphere and in which the visitor becomes an active part of the project.