Mariko Mori

Mariko Mori 森 万里子
Mariko Mori at the Japan Society Panel on Art & Nature on 2010
Born	1967 (age 49–50) Tokyo, Japan
Nationality	Japanese
Known for	Photography, digital art, sculpture
Notable work	Birth of a Star, Nirvana, Dream Temple, Wave-UFO, Pure Land, Tom Na-hui
Movement	Contemporary Art, Pop Art, environmental art
Awards	Menzione d’onore Venice Biennale, (1997) 8th Annual Award as a Promising Artist and Scholar in the Field of Contemporary Japanese Art, Japan Cultural Arts Foundation, (2001)

Mariko Mori (森 万里子, Mori Mariko^?, born 1967) is a contemporary Japanese artist.

Mariko Mori was born in Tokyo in 1967. Mori's father is an inventor and real estate tycoon, and her mother is an art historian of European Art. While studying at Bunka Fashion College in Tokyo in the late 1980s, Mori worked as a fashion model. In 1989, she moved to London to study at the Chelsea College of Art and Design and studied there until 1992. 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 splits her time between London, New York, and Tokyo.

Mori's early work references traditional Japanese culture and ancient history but is characterized by futuristic themes and characters. Her early photography is heavily influenced by cosplay. Fantastic deities, robots, alien creatures, and spaceships are featured in video and photography with the artist herself dressed up in various self-made costumes as these characters.

Present throughout her career is a fascination with technology and spirituality, with technology as a means of transcending and transforming consciousness and self.

While her tableaus were fantastic and futuristic, the role played by the female characters she portrayed were often traditional, gendered roles such as a waitress in Tea Ceremony, a futuristic version of the female Buddhist deity Kichijoten in Pure Land, or a female Japanese pop star in Birth of a Star.

Mori attributes her fascination with consciousness and death to experiencing sleep paralysis in her early-twenties for several hours which left her unsure if she was alive or dead.

Mori's early works, such as her photograph Play with Me, use her own body as the subject, and she costumes herself as a sexualized, technological alien woman in everyday scenes.